This page was originally posted before OS X Tiger (and Leopard) was released, although later reports are from OS X 10.5.x and 10.4.x users. (The first reports from OS X Tiger users reported that some cards (for instance FW800 PCI cards) now supported deep sleep, although as usual (especially with USB PCI Cards) often connected devices (especially storage class USB devices) can still prevent deep sleep.) There are some later OS X 10.4.x reports here, later than the initial feedback on Tiger/PCI cards in the May 4th, 2005 main news page. (ref: Initial Summary list
of Tiger/PCI card sleep reports. Also there's a note/tip on Tiger restart/shutdown problems due to some 3rd party startup items.)

This page has reader reports on deep sleep with PCI Firewire and USB (or FW/USB combo) cards. (Also includes a report on a PCCard USB 2.0 adapter.)
If any readers have a Firewire, USB or Firewire/USB combo card that does allow deep sleep (and wakes w/o problems) let me know.Include your system, OS version and card model/brand details in reports and
test sleep/wake with and without a drive/device connected to the card if you see problems with a device connected. Thanks!

(If I can ever get the time I'd like to summarize the results here in a
table.)

Reader Reports: (most recent first) Note: Many "brands" of PCI USB and/or FW cards are just re-branded/packaged from a far-east OEM mfr. and could have the chipset/design of the card change over time. I've seen this happen with Firewire cards and USB cards in the past. (For G5 specific FW/USB reports - also see the G5 Firewire/USB device/card feedback page.)

NitroAV Firewire 800 + USB2 combo PCI card:

(added 5/11/2009)
"kumen 7 Port NitroAV Firewire 800 & USB2 combo PCI card (£63.73) in Quicksilver 2002 w/Dual G4 1.8GHz (7447A) upgrade.
It's been a while now and I reported that I had some sleep issues with the machine with some (usually separately powered USB) devices with this.
I had an almost pervesely amusing attempt to buy this direct from originator - who until I paid by paypal wanted to treat me as if I was a foreign trade importer for a single sale - credit card reference checks and conversations with my bank required before they would accept my money.

The only video catch was realising that during Mac OS X upgrades the system didn't recognise the Cinema HD Display properly unless its USB cable was plugged into a built in USB port. Once its been recognised by the system it's fine to then leave the Screen's USB plugged into my Akumen USB2 PCI card to act as a USB2 hub for iSight camera and Elgato TV Hybrid. There are a few other items like keyboards and bluetooth which need to be connected to the built in apple ports to activate wake from sleep.

Watching TV on the wonderful Elgato Hybrid (which happily accepts the PCI USB2) has been great - if a productivity killer!
But I have to say I am thoroughly pleased with this card.
Akumen was absolutely unique in offering USB2 and Firewire 800 in a single PCI card and for anyone who needs these facilities it works well.
-Tim"

Sonnet Tango Express FW800/USB 2.0 PCIe Card in 2009 Mac Pro:

(added 5/4/2009)
"I've been using a Tango Express 800 Combo FW800/USB 2.0 for a couple weeks in a stock (2009) Mac Pro Quad-Core 2.66Ghz (4GB RAM, OS X 10.5.6). Card performs flawlessly: deep sleep and never fails to wake. I have two LaCie Big Disk Extreme (RAID) plugged into it and a Belkin USB hub with Epson printer & scanner. A WD Passport, IPod Classic and Lexar flash drive connect on and off to USB without problems as well.

The odd thing is the LaCie drives would not autosense for startup/shutdown with the built-in FW800, but work perfectly with the Tango card.
Aloha, Peter
(Guitarist & Professor of Music)"

BYTECC PCIe USB 2.0 (4+1 Ports) Model BT- PEU2410:

(added 8/21/2008)"Cheap PCIe USB 2.0 card for MacPro's. Just a heads up on the BYTECC PCIe USB 2.0 4+1 PORTS Card Model BT- PEU2410 ($22.99).
This is a generic and apparently the cheapest PCIe usb 2.0 card I could find. I was running low on USB ports and I hate USB hubs. This card looks exactly like the sonnet tech cards so I gave it a shot.

Card works and performs flawlessly. I sleep my mac every day, and never fails to wake. Performance is on par with built-in USB.

The ONLY issue is wake from sleep when your keyboard and/or mouse are plugged into the card, In which case they will NOT wake the machine. If you use onboard ports for the keyboard and mouse your golden.
System config: 2008 MacPro 8-core 2.8ghz, 12GB Ram, 8800GT, Radeon 2600HD, Apple OEM 500gb drive bay1, 40gb Seagate drive bay2(bootcamp), Dual DVD-RW, Bluetooth/Airport

Devices I use on the sonnet (you mean BYTECC right?) card:

Drobo 1 (USB Only) 2.0TB

iPod Touch/iPhone sync

APC Backups 1500

Canon 570IS Camera

Card under bootcamp is subject to Windows new device found. But it works flawlessly with the drivers it finds.
-Stacy P."

Sonnet Tango (USB 2.0/FW400) PCI card w/OS X 10.5.2:

(added 2/14/2008)"I have a Sonnet Tango 2.0 PCI USB/FW 400 card in a G4 MDD Dual 1.25 GHz. It worked fine in Tiger. Starting with 10.5, if I have a hub attached to it, the system hangs on sleep - even if there are no devices on the hub. If I have non mass storage devices connected without a hub (printer, scanner, EyeTV 250+), it sleeps fine. (FYI - sleep problems with USB PCI cards (with any storage class device connected at least) is -very- common, going back long before OS X Tiger or Leopard as noted in past reports here.-Mike)This problem was not resolved with 10.5.2. My system still hangs on sleep if a hub is attached to the Tango.

10.5.2 also introduces a new problem. Every time I wake the system up, I get two USB over-current notices. This happens even if the only USB device connected is my Apple keyboard and mouse.
(he later wrote, in reply to my comments below)
Yes, I always use the Combo updater. Yes, I've done that. (USB device disconnect/reconnect - using different USB port, etc.) I don't have any problems getting devices recognized, just getting the system to sleep. The overcurrent notice is completely bogus. While it says it disabled the hub in question, no devices are disabled - everything works after wake. It happens even if just the Apple keyboard/mouse are connected.

I have been running mostly without the hub, which is a huge pain. I haven't even tested mass storage USB devices under Leopard. The sleep hangs are all with related to the presence of a hub. Just having the hub connected with no devices at all on the hub, is enough for it to hang.
Running with my Canon MP780 AIO and my EyeTV 250+ connected to the card, it sleeps just fine (although occasionally it takes 2 minutes to sleep). I've tried Stratitec, Belkin, and Gigaware USB 2.0 hubs.
When it hangs, all of my firewire disks spin down and the monitor shuts off, but the fan keeps running and it never goes in to final sleep. All I can do is power it off. It won't wake up.
If I leave the hub disconnected, put the system to sleep, connect the hub, then wake it, it wakes fine and all devices are visible.

Just another comment... I ran the Apple Firewire Debugger on 10.5 or 10.5.1. Blasted system won't fail when that is running - goes to sleep properly every time, so Apple can't get any information on to see exactly what is happening. Grrr...-Wes"

Several initial Leopard (pre-10.5.2 release) users had said USB devices were not recognized after waking from sleep (a restart was required). Even some that used only onboard USB ports saw that, but I hadn't with my AL iMac (onboard USB ports or attached Ministack's Hubs). A Feb. 12th report below from a USB 2.0 PCI (Belkin) card owner said 10.5.2 fixed that for him - but nothing seems 100% common (problems or fixes) with OS X updates...Not normally related to hubs, but a common tip for USB device recognition problems after an OS X update (i.e. printer, UPS USB connection, etc.) is to try disconnecting/reconnecting the device (with OS running) - at times even using a different USB port connection may help. (I've seen that once with a UPS USB connection and even USB iPods directly connected to a Mac.) And sometimes reinstalling an OS X update using the "Combo" updater download can help with odd problems after an update. I used (and recommended) the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo Updater instead of software update. (I sometimes do a force prebinding again from the terminal also and sometimes a reinstall of the combo update can help - for the extremely conservative, RP before the update and even a safe boot is done.)

Belkin USB 2.0 PCI Card w/OS X Leopard 10.5.2:

(added 2/12/2008)
"Belkin USB 2.0 PCI Card w/OS X 10.5.2
It seems as though the sleep problem with usb 2.0 cards has been fixed, at least for the Belkin cards. (What model Belkin card? An F5U220?-Mike) In 10.5.1, anytime my 2002 Quicksilver went to sleep, I would lose all functionality of the USB 2 card. Now it works fine from sleep. No problems so far, just fixes. By the way, I have a 2002 Quicksilver with a 1.8 ghz Gigadesigns processor.
-David"

I'm guessing the Belkin card is NEC chip based? Hopefully the update helps everyone that had USB PCI card problems w/Leopard since the original release (see links below). I've even had some onboard port users of some USB devices say after waking from sleep the device wasn't recognized. (Not seen that here w/10.5.1 though, even those connected via the Ministack's hubs.) Here's some links to early (OS X 10.5.0) reports on USB 2.0 PCI cards (from the Nov. 2007 news page):

(added 11/20/2006)
" I bought a Sonnet Allegro PCI card that only had USB 2.0 ports on it and I thought I'd be the first to write in the reports on it and my G4 model. G4 tower w/1.2ghz Sonnet CPU upgrade, ATI Radeon 9000 pro, 1.5GB RAM, 112 GB Seagate Hard Drive for OS X, 3 GB Quantum Fireball for OS 9, Motorola WPCI810G Wireless Card, PCI Fan, Pioneer DVR-110D DVD Drive, using DVI cable for Samsung 930b LCD monitor and not the analog cable. (Just for the record I asked for the specific OS X version used and specific G4 tower model.-Mike)
I am using OS X 10.4.8 on a Digital Audio model G4. I don't know what version of the Sonnet card I'm using, but
on the box cover it shows a big rectangle with the 4 ports on the front and one in the back (for internal USB stuff), but the size of the card was cut down by half, so it's a revision of an older card.

I decided to purchase the Sonnet Allegro card because I didn't see any sleep problem reports on here using the Sonnet, only the Belkin PCI card and others. (I think he's referring to a past news post shortly after OS X 10.4/Tiger was released in May 2005 that had a Summary list of Tiger/PCI card sleep reports. Actually most all PCI USB cards will often have sleep related problems at least with some types of USB devices connected to the card (most often storage related devices, although sometimes even a scanner or printer may also cause sleep problems).-Mike) Installing the Sonnet Allegro was cinch. No drivers needed, and it was true plug-and-play. Turn off the Mac, plug in the card, tighten it to the case, turn it on and the Mac sees it instantly.

As far as peripherals I have a Logitech optical mouse plugged in to one of the main USB ports on the Mac. The remaining peripherals consist of an M-Audio Radium 61 controller, a Logitech Wireless keyboard (scored for $6 at a thrift store, and it works with the batteries still in there), a Powered USB 2.0 4-port hub and a Canon iP6220D printer. What I did to get these results was mainly change between the Sonnet USB 2.0 card and the remaining onboard 1.1 port (the other 1.1 USB port is used by the Logitech mouse). I also have a cable for a Sony camera hooked in to one of the 2.0 ports and an iPod cable going to one of the other 2.0 ports. I haven't tested these out yet because the camera is usually unplugged and off, and I use a separate charger for my iPod nano half the time instead of using the Mac to recharge it. I may test these out later.

The wireless keyboard has the receiver so I'll just refer to it as WK. For some reason moving the Logitech mouse does not bring the Mac awake after a deep sleep or minor sleep. This has been apparent even before I installed the Sonnet USB card.

In all these tests I put the Mac to sleep by selecting Sleep from the Apple menu.

FIRST TEST: Printer off, WK in 1.1 port = Turns back on by pressing enter key. I didn't try it using the Mac's from panel power button since it turned on right away from the keyboard, and I'll just tap that first before I revert to using the front panel power button.

SECOND TEST: Printer off. WK in hub, hub going to Sonnet card = None of the keys on the keyboard worked to bring the Mac awake. Only pressing the power button on the Mac awakens it.

THIRD TEST: Printer off, WK in hub, hub plugged into onboard 1.1 port = None of the regular keys were able to wake up the Mac, but I pressed the power key on the keyboard (labeled as "User") and the Mac woke up.

FOURTH TEST: Printer On and in hub, hub going to Sonnet card, WK in 1.1 port = Only went into mild sleep with hard drive still running. No keyboard buttons worked. No front panel power button on Mac worked. Turned printer off and tried all buttons again but Mac remained in mild sleep or locked up. Did a hard reset by holding down power button on Mac until it turned off, then pressed the button again to turn on.

FIFTH TEST: Same connections as above with WK in hub = Same results before and after turning printer off.

SIXTH TEST: Printer on and in hub, WK in hub, hub in onboard 1.1 port = Woke back up by pressing any button on the wireless keyboard.

CUBASE TEST: I had the printer off (I don't print while I'm jamming), and have the Radium plugged in to one of the ports on the Sonnet card. I started a blank project and loaded only one virtual instrument (M-Audio Key Rig) and was able to produce sound. After putting the Mac to sleep I waited 30 seconds then turned it on by pressing the Enter key on the keyboard. Immediately I tried the piano keys on the Radium and nothing happened. I tried for about 15 seconds and then sound was produced again, which tells me that it went normal. Even after waking my Mac up from deep sleep, it takes a while before everything is normal, such as the wireless connection. The first time I tried this when it came out of sleep, the "In" port on Cubase showed that it wasn't connected, even though it was making sounds after 15 seconds. The second time I tried this (not sure if I rebooted or just went to sleep again), it still showed that it was connected.

CONCLUSION: If I keep the 2.0 hub in the 1.1 port then I should be able to wake the Mac up from sleep and not have any problems. But I manage to turn peripherals off when I'm not using them anyways. I have it set up so that the wireless keyboard receiver and the optical mouse are using the original 1.1 USB ports; while the hub, iPod cable, Sony camera cable and Radium cable are plugged in to the Sonnet. This way all the faster devices are using 2.0 speed and I still have three 2.0 ports left on the hub.
I hope this helps.
Eric B.
http://emax4.fortunecity.com"

Adaptec AUA-4000 USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 12/21/2005)
"I recently bought an Adaptec AUA-4000 from CompUSA, which is the 4 port version. It does not support sleep on my 867 QS running 10.4.2 (8A428). Too bad too because I sure would like it to. As long as any device is attached, the machine will not sleep or wake (the monitor sleeps, but the machine requires a force-restart). Maybe 10.4.3 will do the trick, but I would be surprised...
-Scott"

The earlier report (below) on the AUA-2000 model had an update from Tony later in the day that said he also had problems after a restart and tests with an iPod. (see
updated report below)

Adaptec AUA-2000 USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 12/20/2005 - later revised)
"Mike, .... Your recent update on USB 2.0 card was timely,
as I'm hoping (come on Apple shipping!) to give my sister a Nano for
Christmas and she's using my old dual 500 machine, which of course
doesn't have USB 2.0 built in. So I figure I'd experiment on cards
with my dual 1.42 MDD machine and see what I came up with. Both my
machine and hers are running fully updated versions of Tiger. (10.4.3)

I went to Best Buy and they have a 2 port Adaptec AUA-2000 that
specifically lists Mac support so I brought it home to try. It
installed with no problems and was recognized by the system as a high
speed bus and 2 low speed buses. I plugged in my Kingston 1GB USB
drive and it was recognized as a high speed device on the high speed
bus. I forced the system to sleep and it went into a full low power
sleep (fans off). It came back up on a mouse click without problems
(other than complaining about the Kingston drive not being put away).
I've also successfully slept the system with an Epson 777 inkjet
printer and a ImageMate card reader attached. Each time the system
has gone into full sleep and recovered without freezing.

Hope this helps someone else looking for a card. I'm going to keep
the one in my system and buy another one for hers. I'll update you if
there's any issues. Thanks for being there all these years!
-Tony C.
(Thanks Tony. I asked he report back if he saw any problems with sleep with an iPod connected.-Mike )
I have to rescind my glowing report of the Adaptec AUA-2000 USB 2.0
card. After another restart, the computer now will not sleep
correctly with anything but a mouse connected to it, including my 4G
40GB iPod. I'm not sure why it worked right the first time. I'll keep
experimenting and see if I can pin it down.
"

Report on Several USB 2.0 Cards

(added 12/16/2005)
"PowerMac G4 (MDD) Dual 1GHz/1.5GB RAM/nVidia GeForce 4Ti/Mac OS X 10.4.3
I do not believe any USB 2.0 card will act as one would expect on our
computers.
I have tried 3 different USB 2.0 cards since purchasing my video iPod
and none of them work properly. Following the advice from others
online, both here and from Apple Discussions, I tried the following
cards:

CompUSA 5-port USB 2.0 card (Product Number: 288605)

Belkin 5-port USB 2.0 card (part number: F5U220v)

Belkin 2-port USB 2.0 card (part number: F5U219-APL)

All these cards employ an NEC chipset. The last card (F5U219-APL)
was recommended in Apple KBase article #93405. (Apple's iPod: Recommended FireWire and USB Cards, but as I mentioned before I don't know if they
tested for deep sleep support - and as always, connected devices can also be a cause of
sleep/wake problems, especially storage devices it seems.-Mike) Which was recently
updated and removed the "-APL" suffix from the part name. I had to
pay Belkin a $10 premium for that suffix.

All of these cards behaved in a similar manner and exhibited the
following issues:

Failure to support deep sleep with iPod attached (unit will sleep,
fans still spin)
(this isn't uncommon unfortunately, it would be
nice if apple mentioned tests for this in their kbase doc.-Mike)

Failure to wake from sleep (nothing will wake system once it has
been put to sleep with iPod attached, forced power-off and reboot is
only option)

Intermittent, rare, freezing when waking unit from sleep if mouse/
keyboard is attached directly to USB PCI card (issue not present when
using built-in USB ports) (personally I'd not bother attaching
a keyboard/mouse to a PCI card, just use the builtin USB ports
for that-Mike)

When there are no devices connected to the USB PCI cards, the
computer would sleep and wake without issue. I tried installing the
cards in different PCI slots, issues persisted. I tried resetting
the PMU, the issues persisted. I reset open firmware, the issues
persisted.

All the cards fully support USB 2.0 transfer. I never had any
problems with devices being properly recognized. The only real
issues involved sleeping the computer with devices still attached.

I find this very annoying but probably something I can learn to live
with. Needles to say, I was very disappointed when the ONLY card
Apple recommends (Belkin F5U219-APL) didn't work properly. (apple's page
currently lists only 2 PCI cards - the other is an Orange Micro model
but I'm not sure they're even still available-Mike) However, I
would feel comforted if I knew a firmware update were in the works to
correct this problem.
-David H.
"

I've never seen a firmware update for a USB 2.0 card personally and I'd not
hold my breath waiting for one. (Unfortunately connected device problems like this is pretty common, although some may not support deep sleep regardless.) I wonder if the OS could unmount the connected devices before going to sleep would help. (Then they'd be redetected/mounted on waking from sleep.) See below for other reports on the Belkin USB 2.0 card (noting it worked for deep sleep w/o any devices attached.)

Belkin USB 2.0 Card (F5U219):

(added 12/16/2005)
"Just wanted to let you know that I recently installed a Belkin
2.0 USB PCI card, model #F5U219. I had sleep problems with
it. I'd put my mac to sleep but it wouldn't wake from sleep. The
monitor would go dark as it should but the fan would keep running.

I just now tried it without anything (scanner and printer) connected to
the card and it goes to sleep as it should and it wakes as it should.
Go figure! (connected devices are often a culprit which is why
I ask to test with and without devices attached.-Mike)
I'm going to try at sometime to install the card in a
different slot and see if that makes a difference. (That normally won't
help unfortunately.-Mike) thanks for the great site and wealth of information.
regards, Javier
"

The Sonnet Tempo Trio caused my system to crash when entering deep
sleep. The video would go dark, but drives and fans were still
going, and a hard reset was needed to regain control. This behavior
occurred with and without USB devices attached. (I've not checked
sonnet's site but asked if he had checked there for any firmware updates, etc.
for the Trio, although that may not matter.-Mike) I replaced this with
the ATA-only Tempo card and have had no problems.

Next, I tried the SIIG USB2.0/FW800 card, and had the same problems
with going into deep sleep, with and without USB devices attached.

Following a tip I read on XLR8yourmac, I followed the link to Apple's
recommended USB 2.0 solutions for Macs without built-in USB 2.0:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93405, (also covers Firewire cards-Mike) and I picked up a Belkin F5U219 for $39.99 at Microcenter. This card allows me to go
in and out of deep sleep with the following devices attached:
Epson SP750, Canoscan U670, Kodak EasyShare PrinterDock, Back-UPS ES 500.
However, when I attach my D-Link DBT-120 Bluetooth adapter, with
Bluetooth on and discoverable, I experience the same deep sleep
problems as before. With Bluetooth turned off and my DBT-120
attached, I can go in and out of deep sleep without issue.

I've given up on FW800 for now, but it appears that as long as I
remember to turn off bluetooth before I go to sleep (or if just plug
my Bluetooth adapter into one of the built-in USB 1.0 ports, I'll be
okay.
Thanks, Matt
"

FYI - back when OS X Tiger was released some FW800 Card owners (OWC, Lacie, etc.)
said that tiger solved their sleep problems. (Prior to OS X 10.4, no FW800 PCI cards
were reported to support deep sleep - even with no devices connected.)
See the May 4th, 2005 news post with a Summary list
of Tiger/PCI card sleep reports including FW800 cards.

Adaptec 5100 USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 10/5/2005)
"I am having some deep sleep problems with an Adaptec 5100 USB 2.0
card in my dual 1.25 GHz Quicksilver G4 (OS X 10.4.2). It will wake
when no devices are attached, but will hang trying to enter deep
sleep with either my iPod nano or my Sandisk 12 in 1 flash reader
attached.

I have been researching this issue a bit and I think I have come up
with a helpful theory. It appears that the key sticking point for a
lot of cards (those that support deep sleep with no devices attached)
is whether a device is attached that draws bus power. I skimmed your
reader reports and that seemed to verify this issue... Some of the
devices people have not been having trouble with are hubs attached to
external power and printers.

It seems like the problem is this: The PCI bus is powered down before
bus-powered USB devices. Mac OS powers down the PCI cards and then
instructs all USB devices drawing bus power to shut down. Since the
PCI bus is already off, the computer hangs when it attempts to
communicate with a bus-powered USB device that is connected to a PCI
card. This could also be the problem for PCI FireWire cards.

Perhaps you could add this theory to your deep sleep report and
collect some information that will support or disprove it. It seems
that if this is true, it may be something Apple could fix without too
much trouble, provided the necessary information could somehow be
delivered to their developers.
Cheers, Darik D.
(if we could make SCSI work, how hard could it be for USB?)
"

(added 8/31/2005)
"I have an Adaptec AUA-4000B 4-port USB 2.0 PCI card that doesn't support
deep sleep on my Mac G4 Quicksilver, even with only the standard keyboard
plugged into it.
Kevin"

Just for the record I asked what OS version he was using (as 10.4.x solved some sleep problems with
some cards like FW800 models). I also asked if he tested with no devices connected to the card. (The system keyboard wouldn't benefit from a USB 2.0 card anyway so I'd just leave it connected to the onboard USB ports.)

(added 3/2/2005)
"Hi Mike, I have recently added a 4-port USB-2 PCI card to my MDD (FW800) Dual 1.25 GHz + 20" Cinema display system to speed up reading and writing to flash memory sticks. With a 256 MB Kingston DataTraveler flash memory stick inserted shallow sleep (monitor off but fans on) works as normal. Deep sleep commanded via Apple/System Services or automatically (i.e after period of inactivity set in the Energy Saver) works normally. It wakes OK though usually (but not always) displays a message that a device was not put away properly. The flash drive usually is still mounted and functional. Occasionally, however, it is not visible on the desktop. In such cases Disk Utility sees it as mounted. Using Disk utility to unmount then mount still does not result in the drive appearing on the desktop. Removing the drive physically and replacing it does normally cause it to mount again but one one occasion this would not work and the drive was found to be corrupted and
had to be re-formatted.

The machine will NOT go into deep sleep on touching the power switch on
cinema display. The monitor goes dark but the fans continue to run. The computer can then only be woken by powering off and restarting. The flash drive mounts OK after restart. The same happens even if the flash drive is first un-mounted but left connected. With no USB-2 devices connected this problem does not occur.

The PCI card does not have a brand name on the package. It was listed by the vendor as USB 2 card PCI, 4+1 USB ports (EMUP2510). I don't know what the +1 signifies since it has only 4 ports (maybe its internal). The package has the following additional (possibly relevant) information:
USB2.0 PCI to USB Host adaptor
Function: PTU-200
Chipset: NEC (native support for some NEC USB 2.0 chipsets in
later OS X versions)
Supports PCI-bus power management interface spec. release 1.1

The read/write speed (around 10-15 Mb/s) is very welcome and I can live with these limitations but its a pity its not quite 100%.
Geoff D.
"

Another reply from a user of an NEC chipset USB 2.0 PCI Card:

(added 3/2/2005)
"Deep sleep fails, however, when attaching a SanDisk USB 2.0 CF card reader, even without a card inserted. (quote from
a past report here)

Lacie 5-port USB 2.0 PCI card: (follow-up from a reader that posted an earlier report on this card)

(added 2/16/2005)
"I previously reported that this card supported deep sleep, and that was
true with the peripherals I had at the time (USB 2 Canon 8400f scanner,
USB 1.1 card reader, USB 1.1 first-gen D-Link bluetooth adapter).
However since then I've tried two different combination USB 2
hub/multi-card readers and with either of those connected to the Lacie
card my PowerMac G4 Dual-533 (Digital Audio) crashes at sleep and
requires a forced reboot. The first one was branded "Illum FX" which I
got at Circuit City and was a 3-port USB 2 hub/multi-card reader. I
returned that one. The second one that I tried yesterday is an Iogear
6-port USB 2 hub/multi-card reader. I have since plugged the Iogear one
into one of the built-in USB 1.1 ports, and when plugged into that
there is no problem with deep sleep. The problem only occurs when
connected to the Lacie USB 2 card.

Unfortunately I haven't tried just a USB 2 hub or just a USB 2 card
reader with this card as I don't have either of those things, so I
can't say if the problem is only with hubs, only with card readers,
only with combination ones, or happens with any of these devices

Have there been any reports at all that show a particular USB 2 PCI
card supporting deep sleep with a USB 2 hub, card reader or
combination? If not, perhaps the problem lay not with the cards, but
rather with OS X or the PowerMac PCI hardware? Hopefully it is the
former and is thus fixable. (as mentioned before - connected devices can also prevent deep sleep. I don't remember all the past reports here but I don't think there's any way to be 100% certain a connected device won't prevent deep sleep with any card.-Mike)

My experience with PCI in general has been less than stellar. These
deep sleep issues are just the latest. I also had a lot of trouble
getting a PCI Radeon video card to work in my old Blue & White a while
back. I had to go through all kinds of black magic to get that working.
I thought PCI in Macs was suppose to be plug and play? I suppose the
Lacie USB 2 card was plug-and-play-but-then-crash, which is worse. Is
PCI-X any better?
Steve
"

I've had generally good luck with PCI cards, other than some
older model driver issues but there's a lot of cards I've not used. (I rarely use PCI cards now with later macs which have all the ports I personally need onboard.) I don't sleep my towers much (I do the powerbook G4 - very often though) but I wish this wasn't an issue (of trial and error). There's a G5 FW/USB device feedback page here but that also has a lot of reports on lack of deep sleep support and I don't know of a PCI-X USB 2.0 card off the top of my head. (PCI-X is typically backward compatible so std PCI cards are more common for interfaces like USB.)
(Just for the record I asked what OS version was used. Steve's earlier report on this card noted he was using 10.3.7, just wondering if he updated to 10.3.8.)

(added 2/2/2005)
"Lacie 5-port (4 external, 1 internal) USB 2.0 PCI card (NEC chipset)
Installed in Dual 867 MDD running 10.3.7. Connected to the card is an
original (old serial number) MacAlly firewire/USB combo hub (that works
just fine - hasn't blown up with power adapter connected and firewire
devices connected).
The card supports deep sleep if no USB devices are hooked to MacAlly hub. I have a USB pen drive that when attached to the
hub and while either mounted or unmounted causes deep sleep to fail
(fans won't completely shut off- and computer won't wake up- hard
reboot required).
If I attach the pen drive directly to the pci card
deep sleep occurs with no problems. Incidentally if the MacAlly hub was
connected to the built-in USB ports then deep sleep would work with the
pen drive attched to hub.

I should also say that my machine has all 4
pci slots filled (2 scsi cards, both Apple OEM, lacie usb card, and
MOTU audio interface PCI-324 card). Attached to the built in USB ports
is a keyspan USB 1.1 hub with a Belkin UPS, LIDE 30 scanner, and a USB
dongle attached. Attached to the keyboard is a bluetooth Dlink module
and a MacAlly mouse.
As long as the pen drive is not attched to the
MacAlly hub, deep sleep works as advertised.
Dr. Joseph B.
"

(added 2/2/2005)
"I'm using a Sonnet Tango 2.0 USB 2.0/Firewire 400 combo card in my Dual
1.25GHz MDD (dual boot), Mac OS X 10.3.7.
As long as I don't have an active mass storage device connected to the firewire, deep sleep works fine.
If I connect a powered-on firewire drive to it, it hangs going into sleep - monitor powers off, power light on solid, fan continues to run a slower speed. So, I run my Formac Studio on the Sonnet and my hard drives from the built-in firewire.
It does have a PCI bridge on it, unlike the CompUSA card I tried that didn't deep sleep at all.
Wes
"

(added 1/24/2005)
"Hi Mike,
I've been following the thread on your site regarding USB2 and FW800 PCI
cards. I recently noticed that SIIG has a new USB2/FW800 combo card so I asked them if it supported deep sleep in 10.3.7 on a g4 agp with a siig ata100/133 card. they promptly sent back a reply saying that yes it
supported deep sleep. So I ordered one (~$70). It may just be my
configuration (nothing wierd there), but the card does not function when
the computer wakes from sleep. On my second attempt to sleep and wake
again I got a 'you need to restart your computer...' crash dialog.

Other than the deep sleep issue (and what I percieve as some dishonesty about same) I have no complaints about the card. All of my USB devises work on the card if it hasn't gone through a sleep cycle. I haven't had a chance to test the transfer speeds to see if the ports perform up to full spec or remove my other pci cards to see if it fixes the problem. I'll update you if/when I do.
JH
"

So far I've not had any reports on FW800 PCI cards that support deep sleep (to date).

Lacie 5-port (4 external, 1 internal) USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 1/19/2005)
"FYI, I have a Lacie 5-port (4 external, 1 internal) USB 2 PCI card and
it seems to support deep sleep just fine, at least if I am
understanding what is meant by "deep sleep" (as opposed to "sleep"?)
That is, if I put the computer to sleep, it goes to sleep as is normal.
No fans running. Is that what is meant by deep sleep? (yes, deep sleep means no fans running, system power light pulsing.-Mike) Do cards that do not support "deep sleep" support "sleep" to some lesser level? What does that mean (what happens with those cards)?
(if an installed card prevents deep sleep, the system may sleep
but the fans (power supply fans, etc.) would still be running.-Mike)

I have seen an intermittent issue with sleep on this machine (PowerMac
G4 Dual-533), but I can't be sure it has anything to do with this card.
Sometimes it doesn't go to sleep on its own after the set interval of
time passes, and so I have to manually put it to sleep. Other times
(most of the time) it does go to sleep on its own, so it's an
intermittent issue. It could well be an OS or other software issue and
have nothing to do with the card. I'm running 10.3.7 and I have
Kensingtons mouse software/driver as well as Canon's scanner
driver/software installed on this system (and the scanner is USB 2, the
reason I got the card in the first place). If it's due to third party
software, I'd think one of those drivers would be the most likely
cause, although they do not display any obvious flaws and unfortunately
I'm just not sure if it had this problem before I installed any of that
stuff or not.
Steve
"

Sometimes connected devices can also prevent deep sleep, so if you
see a problem (fans still running, etc.) try disconnecting/unmounting anything connected to the card.

IOGear GIC251U USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 1/18/2005)
"IOGear pci USB 2.0 model # GIC251U card by itself supports deep
sleep. These items connected also deep sleep is supported: Canon i860,
HP Laserjet 2300 and a Yamaha Cavit sound board. I did try removable
media such as Lexar jump drive, Pen Drive flash hard drive and a PNY
Attache.
With the removable media attached(hardware) and one deep
sleeps the Mac it does deep sleep and does wake up but the user is
warned by the OSX that the media was not put away properly. I think
that this is acceptable since removable media should be put away when
power loss is imminent.
-Don
"

Don didn't include his Mac system/OS version used but based on
recent posts in the drive db, it's a MDD G4 tower running 10.3.7. (As mentioned above please include your mac model/os version used, etc. in reports. thanks.)

More NitroAV 7 port FW800/USB2.0 card Reports/Performance Tests:Heather sent a follow-up to her previous report below, in reply to
another owner's comments (dated 8/19/2004) on performance with the
card:

(added 8/23/2004)
"NitroAV FW800/USB 2.0 PCI card:
I wanted to follow-up with some disk tests to the report added on 8/19/2004.

My only FW800 drive is the LaCie Big Disk 500 GB (triple interface model), being that it is not the Extreme model, it might not be capable of the same throughput.

I don't have time to put together a comprehensive report but I did some
Xbench disk tests for comparison. I think a graph would be the easiest way to present the data but I don't have the time.

I tested my Lacie drive with the NitroAV card and my Lacie FW800 card as
well as the Apple FW400 ports. For comparison I tested the speed of my 2nd internal ATA drive (not my boot disk), an ST3120024A (Seagate Barracuda 120 GB)

I'll start with the internal ATA drive:
(Note - At times I've seen larger than expected variations in
Xbench disk scores from run/run with the same drive/same system.)

(Note with the previous test, that the NitroAV is a bit slower than a
dedicated FW800 card like the LaCie. Also note that they only differ in the two uncached write tests. I'd be happier with the LaCie speeds but I want my machine to sleep. The LaCie PCI card is stable but doesn't allow sleep.)

(Here is the LaCie Big Disk using its FW400 port connected to the Apple
FW400 port.)

In this final test, note that the FW800 port isn't much faster than the
FW400 port. So I would have to conclude that the NitroAV isn't the fastest FW800 PCI card. I didn't include my older results from Mac OS X 10.3.3 but I noted that in those earlier tests, the LaCie PCI card scored much higher than it did under 10.3.5 I don't know if that would also effect the NitroAv scores.

I only have two USB 2.0 devices, one a printer, the other a scanner. Since I leave them off most of the time, any effect on FW drive scores isn't important to me. I did do some disk tests with the USB devices attached and power. I did find slower results but only occasionally, sometimes the tests were normal, other times significantly slower.

Finally, about the sleep issues.

USB 2.0: I found that if a USB drive was attached to the NitroAv card, sleep would cause a hang. That would require a forced restart. That only happens with a drive attached and powered. Unmounting the drive wasn't enough, it had to be off.

FW800: I found that if a FireWire 800 drive was attached to the NitroAv
card, sleep would cause a hang and required a forced restart. If the drive was ejected this would not occur. The drive could still be on and attached. This is why the script with "sleepwatcher" works. (see her earlier report below for more info/link to sleepwatcher) It ejects the drive on sleep and remounts it on wakeup. If the drive is busy, it must forcibly unmount the drive.

Conclusion:
I haven't found a USB 2.0 card or FW800 card that fully meets my needs. The NitroAV card is "good enough" as I can live with its
shortcomings. The speed isn't as big of an issue as I capture to my
internal ATA drive.

I am tempted to forego FW800 altogether, rip out the drives from my LaCie disk, install them internally with an ATA/133 PCI card, and setup for a RAID. The LaCie external case could be used for something else. It would probably be much faster, take up less space, and not require an external
power source.
- Heather
"

This NitroAV card owner wrote in reply to Heather's comments in
a previous report below:

(added 8/19/2004)
"Mike, I read the reader report posted Friday (see 8/12/2004 multi-card report below this one) on (limited) success of deep sleep for the NitroAV 7 port FW800/USB2.0 card (which I have as well). While all I can report on deep sleep is that my machine does indeed "hang" when
attempting to go into deep sleep mode, I wanted to ask Heather about
another, more serious issue: FW800 speed. I have held back reporting on this
issue because firewiredirect told me it should be fixed with a firmware
update (plus I have been too busy to write the detailed report I want to).
Well, that was a month ago and I still haven't heard anything. The issue I am having, and it has been verified with firewiredirect tech support, is that the write speeds for FW800 drives using this card are grossly
underrated. I have two FW800 drives, a firewiredirect.com Ultra III 120GB and a LaCie BigDisk Extreme 320GB. Connecting these drives to the NitroAV results in the following speeds (I tested on a MDD D1.25GHz G4 rev.C (no FW800 builtin) and QuickBench X 2):

For the BigDisk Extreme (RAID 0 Stripe set inside the Case), I get only about 44.5MB/sec write. For the Ultra III, it is even worse at 32.5MB/sec. That's right, I'm getting even less
write speeds using native FW800 than if I were to use FW400! The Ultra III has a FW400 port on it as well and it achieves the same speeds when attached to the builtin FW400 port. The hard drive inside is a Maxtor 6Y120PO (120GB 7200rpm 8MB cache ATA6), so I know the limit isn't caused by the drive. And I have tested another FW400 drive I have from AcomData, and it gets around 36MB/sec. Of note, the read speeds for the FW800 drives is consistent and what should be expected from FW800 at 55-58MB/sec. Also of note, if I
connect ANY USB devices, 1.1 or 2.0, to the USB 2.0 ports on the NitroAV, then performance is even worse, as I can see the write speeds of the FW800 drives drop 5MB/sec! For reference, I tested the drives using the builtin FW800 port on a dual 1.42GHz MDD and with a LaCie FW800 PCI card, and the write speed for the BigDisk Extreme was consistently at the 55MB/sec range. For the Ultra III, they were in the 44-46MB/sec range. That's the FW800
speeds I thought I was buying into.

Unfortunately, with these write problems, I have to heartily recommend that people looking into the combo USB2.0/FW800 card solution right now, STAY AWAY! If the firmware fix is coming, then maybe it will be worth it. But firewiredirect has told me they are essentially merciless to waiting for the firmware from the Taiwanese manufacturer, and being that a month has gone by, I wouldn't hold your breadth. Firewiredirect has even told me to return the card for a refund.
And that is the dilemma I am faced with. I also have Radeon 7500, AlchemyTV DVR, and M-Audio Revolution 7.1 cards installed, so I have only one remaining slot. This card was supposed to be my nirvana piece. I have 13 USB devices (1.1 and 2.0) connected at the same time, and on the builtin USB 1.1 bus, it maxes the power and throughput that USB 1.1 can
handle and everything is very slow. So, the NitroAV did solve that problem (plus, my USB 1.1 Zip 250 drive has performance comparable to fast SCSI using the USB 2.0 port).
But, I badly need full performance from FW800 for my video editing. NitroAV just doesn't cut it in that department.

Also, I have tested Deep Sleep support with the card and 10.3.5; no go. The machine does the same as before, which is it just crashes without any response from the monitor.
-CS
"

Multi-Card Test Report:

(added 8/12/2004)
"I've been watching your site for some time hoping that a reader would report success with a FW800 PCI card. (To date no FW800 PCI card
is reported to support deep sleep by users, despite some company claims. One vendor told me that there's a fix in 10.4, but not proven yet and 10.4 is not released yet.) After some research, at XLR8yourmac and other sites, it seems that the best options regarding deep-sleep are to be found with combo PCI cards that use a PCI-PCI bridge. So far the majority of combo PCI cards are USB 2.0/FW400.

Well, I really need FW800 for my LaCie Big Disk 500 GB (FW800/FW400/USB 2.0) drive and my attached (FW400) Canopus ADVC-300. Daisy-chaining them was the only way to capture to the FW disk and output reliably to video. I also needed USB 2.0 to work reliably for an Epson R300 and a Minolta Scan Dual IV
,p.
I have tried these cards, under 10.3.4:OrangeMicro USB 2.0 card, worked well with earlier OS revisions. With later versions it caused serious stability problems, with or without devices attached.

LaCie FW800 card, no deep-sleep, with or without attached/powered devices.

IOGear FW800 card, no deep-sleep, with or without attached/powered devices.

I have found limited success with a combo FW800/USB 2.0 card from
FireWireDirect.com, the NitroAV model. This is a 7-port PCI card, 3 FW800 ports (1 internal), 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (1 internal). The internal ports are listed as "shared", I have no idea what that means, the manual doesn't explain. The card supports bus power for FW and USB, it requires a power cable adapter from the large molex connector to a small pin connector.

I contacted Akumen.com originally to ask about the PCI bridge and sleep but they never responded. I then bought from FireWireDirect.com on the hope that it would work. (FWDirect is apparently related to Akumen).
Here's how the NitroAV is seen in ASP (10.3.5):

Now the good and the bad news:
Most USB 2.0/1.1 devices work fine with the NitroAV card, deep-sleep works fine with or without devices attached and/or powered. No kernel panics were seen after about 20 sleep/wakeup cycles.

One additional test was my LaCie Big Disk and it's USB 2.0 interface. With the drive mounted or unmounted I would get a machine hang and no deep-sleep. If I unmounted and then powered the drive off, everything would work fine.

For the FW800 portion, deep-sleep works fine with no devices attached. No kernel panics or crashes. I only have the LaCie FW800 Big Disk to test with but I found that if the drive was attached and mounted, deep-sleep would not work, and it would not wake from sleep. The mounted drive would try to mount and unmount a few times and then the machine would hang.

That is why I mentioned limited success, if I eject the FW800 drive and then sleep, the system works fine. On wakeup, the drive has to be manually mounted. If the drive is not mounted and sleep is attempted again, the machine will hang.

I have found a workaround, but it might require some fine-tuning, or extra scripting to make it foolproof. I found SleepWatcher
(http://home.t-online.de/home/bernhard.baehr/) and wrote a very simple script to eject the FW800 drive on sleep and remount it on wakeup. As I said, it might need some better scripting, it has failed on 2 occasions to eject the disk. Looks like it doesn't work if the disk is busy. The machine hangs if the disk isn't ejected. The script that SleepWatcher calls is just calling the command "diskutil" to eject or mount the drive. It really needs to check if the disk ejected successfully before allowing sleep.

Overall, I'm happy with this setup. I have a working USB 2.0 implementation and a FW800 setup that works with deep-sleep. It's not perfect but it beats kernel panics and no deep-sleep.
Sorry for the long e-mail,
Heather D.
"

Using Firewire Hub instead of PCI Card:

(added 8/6/2004)"
Some progress to report, of a kind.
While not my preferred solution, I decided to try a FW hub rather than
a PCI card due to all the uncertainty of finding a card that would
work. (many cards work/function, it's sleep support that is the uncertainty)

I bought a cheapish (AUD$60.00) Highlight H-Box 6-post FW400 Repeater
(Made by Heisei/Taiwan. Part No: H-EHBOX806T). Although there is no
mention of Mac compatibility on the packaging it was bought from an
authorised Apple Shop. The '6-port' description is a bit of a misnomer
by the way. One of the ports is input to the computer and another is a
4-pin port, leaving only 4 6-pin connections. It comes with a power
adapter and short FW cable.

And it works. My G4 Quicksilver enters and wakes from Deep Sleep
without a problem, with (printer, scanner, iPod Dock) or without
anything connected. 3 days so far without a problem.
Running OS 10.3.4
Regards, Phil
"

Reader report on Swann USB 2.0 PCcard A PowerBook G4 Ti owner sent a report on using his Swann USB 2.0 Cardbus (PCcard) adapter with 10.3.3/10.3.4.

I have seen posts addressing sleep problems, 10.3.4, USB and Canon LIDE scanners. I hope my experience may help others.

I have a PB G4 Ti 667MHz and had been using a Swann USB 2.0 Cardbus device, to give me 2 USB 2.0 ports, with a Canon LIDE 50 (scanner). After some initial "not waking up" problems on OS 10.3.3 and following all the best advice I could find, I did a clean install of 10.3.3 and all was well. The Swann USB 2.0 Cardbus controller apparently uses an NEC chipset (not sure), and has Mac drivers on the mini-CD with it, which I installed . So I had a successful USB 2.0 set-up on my G4 Ti, which natively has only USB 1.1.

When I applied the OS 10.3.4 combo upgrade, I imediately had a severe "won't wake up" problem. Any time the system had gone to "sleep", it seemed in fact to be still active (fan noise, etc.) but with a black screen, hung state that it would not come out of. Removing the Cardbus controller would remove the problem (after a forced restart).

Fortunately, reinstalling the USB Cardbus controller driver on OS 10.3.4 returned things to normal. So far, no problems going to sleep or waking up cleanly.
Charles H.
"

CompUSA Firewire/USB 2.0 Card:

"
CompUSA has their CompUSA branded 4 port USB, 2 port Firewire combo card on
sale for $30 (SKU 306475). It uses the ALI chipset and comes with USB
drivers for Mac OS X. There are two different driver installers for 10.1
and 10.2 - no mention of 10.3. There is no external power connector.

I'm running 10.3.3 on a G4 Dual 1.25 Ghz MDD (dual boot). I also have an
Apple/ATTO UL3D SCSI card installed that works just fine with deep sleep. (before
installing the CompUSA card)

In ASP, it shows 3 USB and 1 High Speed USB ports. Some of this is improper
reporting. I never got anything to show up under the High Speed USB port,
and depending on the device, multiple devices showed up under one port. I
never saw more than 2 ports used in ASP, even with 4 operating USB devices.

The card seems to sleep ok with nothing attached. However, with devices
attached, it's a different story. I thought I got it to sleep properly with
my VST media reader once. I couldn't duplicate that though. It would go
into sleep with the fans still running (this is not deep sleep mode), but would successfully wake up. With other devices (e.g. Zip) it would hang. Sometimes the monitor wouldn't
even shut off. Other times it went to sleep with the fans on, but would not
wake. With my Yamaha firewire CDRW, I had that problem also. In the cases
where I could wake it up, the USB ports were complete dead until I rebooted.
Deep sleep with this card is a bust.

My Belkin 7 port USB 1.1 7-port hub works with it, but my Stratitec USB 2.0
4-port hub never powers up and is not visible on the bus. Both hubs work
fine on the motherboard ports.

Other PCI cards (e.g. The ATTO) work well with deep sleep. Why can't we
find a USB 2/FW card that works?! VERY aggravating.

If you don't mind powering your system off instead of putting it to sleep,
for $30 this might be a good deal. I need my sleep...
There is a tech support number for fourstari.com. I'll call them tomorrow.
Wes
"

Generic NEC USB 2.0 Chipset Card: (no card brand/model info)

(added 3/2/2004)
"Mike, after reading this page, I decided to go for a generic 4 port USB
2.0 card with an NEC chipset. I bought one off of Ebay for $13
including shipping.

My computer is a Dual-867 MDD with 768MB of RAM. The only addition it
has is a Pioneer DVR-105 Superdrive. It runs 10.3.2.

Apple system profiler shows it as a "pcie55,2928" card. I have a D-link
bluetooth adapter, an HP iPaq 4155 Pocket PC cradle, an HP laserjet
1012, and a Belkin USB 2.0 8-in-1 media reader plugged into the card.
Bluetooth and printing work just fine. Also, the memory reader reads
and writes at USB 2.0 high speeds... everything seems excellent.

Deep sleep is a different story. At first, the computer would freeze
(not kernel panic, just freeze) every time I put the thing to sleep. I
then noticed that it would always freeze when the bluetooth adapter was
plugged into the card. My theory is because bluetooth would be busy
communicating with the Apple Wireless Keyboard? Anyway, when I moved
the bluetooth adapter to one of the built in USB ports, deep sleep
started to work normally again.

Also, deep sleep doesn't work when I have an SD card mounted in the
Belkin media reader. For non-read/writing peripherals, the card works
great.

For the price, this card is a great deal. I suggest that anyone who's
willing to live with these small problems to go ahead and buy a generic
card with an NEC chipset. Thanks for such a wonderful site!
Zack M.
"

(FYI - The data corruption issue mentioned previously by
a MacAlly FW/USB 2.0 card owner post in the main news
page resulted in two more owners of the same card reporting corruption also.)

Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card:

(added 2/20/2004)"
Mike,
My experiences with some cards are similar to your latest poster's experience with the MacAlly combo card. I have used a LaCie Firewire 800 card (no sleep even with nothing connected to it,) and now a Belkin USB 2.0 card (sleep's fine with printer/scanner connected, but not with drives,) and finally I tried a Zonet USB 2.0 card (VIA chipset) after reading a report in your database about it working fine. (I think he means a past zonet card report here) Well that dog won't even hunt. It shows OK in system profiler, but nothing connected to it shows nor works. That guy was either dreaming or didn't know he had loaded some third party drivers for it, somehow, from somewhere.
Apple's negligence in resolving these driver issues in Mac OS X is very annoying.
TM
(I asked him for mac model/OS X version details - *please* include that info in reports
as requested/underlined above-Mike)
Gigabit G4 Tower/OS X 10.3.2
"

I made a note in the previous report on the Zonet USB 2.0 card about this (I didn't think OS X had VIA USB 2.0 chipset drivers, although it does NEC USB 2.0 chipset in 10.2.8 and later.)

Teac USB floppy drive - NG (cold boot to revive computer)
USB pen drive - OK but message put away data may be lost;
at time I had no data in pen drive...I would think same for Lexmark FW
reader CF.

All this I had system prefs set to sleep one hour including monitor
excluding hard drives. I did try a few optical sleep with hard drives
checked to put to sleep but it made no difference in above data. So I
stopped.

Later on I connected all my devices to set my normal setup with only new
device was the Macally card.. ASP recognized all hardware ok. I even did a
new install of Jaquar and Panther and all the installed software went
normally with the card installed.

So what did the card do for me? I removed my Belkin USB powered bus (Hub?), so I
got rid of unnecessary wires, etc. The printer is now connected to the
Macally card. The Yamaha cavit is to the usb on the computer. Mouse and keyboard
to computer USB. Yamaha FW optical to computer FW port. Belkin FW repeater to the
computer FW port. Lexmark FW CF reader to the Macally card. Two Adaptec 2930
scsi cards with rom version 4.2 and 4.3 connected to two Yamaha F1 scsi
CDRW burners. Four 120 gig hard drives. All is well.

What do I conclude = that all third party USB and FW cards are suspect with
deep sleep but do work fine if computer not slept. User just has to have a plan
thought out what to connect to the card. It surely is not opticals and hard
drives.
Don H.
"

BTW Don, I keep getting bounces back when trying to email you at the address you're using.

Lacie Firewire800 PCI card report: As with all Firewire 800 PCI cards to date that I know of, a reader noted it didn't support deep sleep. (Note: Lacie replied to this post
suggesting connecting a spare HD power connector (4-pin molex connector) to the FW800 PCI card
aux. power connector. For the G5, this means you have to use a "Y" adapter
cable to split the Optical drive Power connection to have a spare power connector and route
it down into the PCI slot area. A Lacie FW800 card owner wrote this did not help the deep sleep problem.)

Issue: When I put the computer to 'sleep' - about 3
minutes passes and then the 2 main processor heat sink
internal fans start slowly revving up to maximum
speed. (it is worth noting that the other internal 2
fans remain at 'sleep" speed) The two main fans will
remain on seemingly indefinately (the air is quite
cool exiting the housing) and spin down when the
system is 'awoken'. The card works as expected when
the system's not asleep - and I can wake and
re-initiate deep sleep repeatedly without any kernel
panic or such nonsense.

* short of hardwiring a fan interruptor switch into
the case I'm not expecting a fix at this time - I have
contacted LaCie and am awaiting a response from the
technical support group. It's a ongoing problem and
maybe Apple will fix it in an upcoming patch or ..
maybe not. (this is a card issue usually)
Sam Y.
"

(added Dec. 15th, 2003)
I'm running a Macally 5-port USB 2.0 card. Never installed the
driver because i'm running 10.28 on my Quicksilver G4 800mhz. the
computer goes to sleep and wakes up with no problem whatsoever.
However i've tried 4 different cards on my AGP g4 400 mhz and haven't
found one yet that will work properly:
the orange micro Firewire/USB 2 caused my computer to freeze continously
the Keyspan 2 port usb card caused the computer to go to sleep and NOT
WAKE UP without a hard reset
after that i had two cheapo pc cards but neither one worked well.
i.s.moore
"

Double-H DH-U20PC5N Card:

(added 12/15/2003)"
USB 2.0 PCI Card News. Bought this card:
http://www.doubleh.com.tw/dh-u20pc5n&2n.htm
This model number: DH-U20PC5N
For f6 UK Pounds (special offer 1 day only - f12 normally) from:
http://web6.scan.co.uk/Products/Info.asp?WPID=47728
Installed it in a Graphite G4 Dual 500 - AGP still running 10.2.8. No
need for Drivers at all. Amazing! (10.2.8 and later have native support
for some USB2.0 chipsets like NEC)
Attached a HP ScanJet 4600 USB 2 scanner. Wow, what an improvement.
Instead of stuttering down a 300dpi A4 Colour Photo it flew down the
scan.
It would only do small chunks on USB 1. Chunk as in scanner head
moving, stopping while data is sent to the Mac, then scanning again.
Now it does huge chunks and starts moving again straight away.
I don't have any Data transfer devices with USB 2 yet.
Very happy indeed!
On the basis of the above experience I've now ordered the PCMCIA
version (only f12! I've seen them for f60) for my 1Ghz PowerBook 15in
SuperDrive (running 10.3.1):
http://www.doubleh.com.tw/dh-u20pcmcia.htm
I'll let you know if that works as well as it's PCI brother.
Great site you run, very helpful.

(I asked if he had tested sleep/wake from sleep)
Yes. After I re-read your page.
It does work. No problem. Wake was fine. Scanned successfully after
deep sleep.
Regards, Aled
"

(added 12/11/2003 mail from Dec. 9th)"
I have been following this thread "Firewire and USB card Deep Sleep
Support" for quite some time ever since my on-board firewire ports all
died. After reading one of the postings that said Macally
USB2.0/FireWire supported deep sleep, I went ahead last week and ordered
it.

I now have it on my machine on PCI slot-4 (QuickSilver G4 933 MHz, Mac
OS X 10.3.1, a FirmTek SeriTek Serial ATA Controller on PCI slot-2, and
another third party USB 1.1 host adaptor on slot-3).

My QuickSilver now goes to deep sleep and wakes up with no problem.

That was the good news....
The bad news is that I still haven't figured out how to make my FirmTek
SATA, an otherwise great SATA controller, work with deep sleep. (this
was noted by other readers with this card in the past news pages and
drive db reports. reportedly firmtek is working on a fix I'm told but no idea
when of if that will appear.-Mike FirmTek
says they have a plan coming on for a new firmware to address this
issue (not waking up from sleep) but it doesn't seem like that will
happen tomorrow. The symptom, in summary, I can put the system to sleep
(yes, it goes into deep sleep) but cannot wake it up. The fan starts
running upon hitting the keyboard but I cannot get my screen back.

But then this is the problem with the SATA controller, not the Macally
USB2.0FireWire. I meant to post a success story with Macally card, and
it works like charm under my configuration....err...that is without the
SATA controller.
Now time to go find an SATA that supports deep sleep.
Thanks, Hans"

One note on Mac SATA cards that I mentioned in a past news page
posting. To date the only other Mac SATA PCI card I know if is the
Sonnet Tempo one, which if you look at the card design appears to be
a rebranded Firmtek model (but at $99.xx list vs $69.xx list for the
Firmtek model). Just a FYI that the sonnet card probably has the
same issue.

KeySpan Firewire/USB Model U2FPCI:

"(Added Dec. 11th, 2003, mail from early November)
"Hi Mike, I have a KeySpan Firewire/USB card in my Quicksilver G4 running under 10.3.
The KeySpan part number is U2FPCI.

USB 2.0 is automatically supported under 10.3 (it wasn't under 10.2.6 that I could see). Under the System Profiler, when there is a USB 2 hub or device attached, that USB bus is listed as "USB High-Speed Bus" with "Speed: Up to 480Mb/sec".

I put the Quicksilver into Deep Sleep using Command+Option+Eject. And I was able to wake the Quicksilver from Deep Sleep without incident.
Regards,
Malcolm"

Zonet USB 2.0 Card: *Update* - Another Zonet USB 2.0 card owner said his card does not support deep sleep. And I didn't think there was any VIA USB 2.0 chipset drivers in OS X
(10.2.8 and later have native NEC USB 2.0 chip support) unless 10.3.x updates
added one.

"(Added Dec. 11th, 2003, mail from early November)
Mike, I have a Zonet 5-Port (4 external, 1 internal) USB 2.0 PCI Card model
ZUH2205V with a Via Chipset installed on my G4 DP/450 running OS 10.3.
So far I have no sleep issues whatsoever, and it seems to function
perfectly with my OWC FireWire/USB 2.0 external hard drive, and my
Canon i450 printer. Oddly enough, this same card would induce a hard
freeze under OS 10.2.8 when either going to sleep, or waking up from
sleep. This would necessitate a reboot using the reset button. Here's
how the System Profiler sees it:

I've asked Alex what mac model he has and for more info on the VIA
chipset card.

(added 11/17/2003)"
Hi Mike,
In my quest to find a USB PCI card w/o deep sleep issues, I wrote to several
companies inquiring about their USB cards:

Adaptec:
Did not allow pre-sales contact with their tech support department w/o a
"Technical Support Identification (TSID)" number.

Belkin:
"From the experience I have had, if there is a USB device connected to the
USB cards, then the Mac will not go to a deep sleep mode."

D-Link:
Tech support dept. told me to contact Sales, they won't do pre-sales
support. No thanks.

IOGEAR:
"Most all USB cards in the market have this problem. I have seen it with our
cards as well."

Keyspan:
No reply after three attempts to contact.

Macally:
"The deep sleep issue is due to Apple OS not supporting sleep function
for add-on PCI card. Our PCI card might not be supported by the Apple OS.
There is nothing we can do about it at this time."

OrangeMicro:
"I have seen some issues with Deep Sleep. Our card may not allow your
computer to deep sleep properly."

SIIG:
"We are not aware of any issues with deep sleep with our USB controllers.
Any of our USB controllers should work without any problem."

I really appreciate the honesty of Belkin, IOGear, Macally and OrangeMicro.

But just to make life interesting, instead of going with the one card that
*claims* no sleep issues (SIIG), I bought an El Cheapo, no-name card from
dvcentury.com for $11 (including shipping). The description said it supports
hot swap, wake-up and OSX. Thanks to the info provided on your site, I made
sure it was a NEC-chip-based card in order to get native 2.0 support in OSX
10.28 and up:
NEC 5-Ports (4+1) USB 2.0 PCI Card; #00-20-502, $11

I installed the card in my G4 400 (Gigabit) w/o additional drivers (it
didn't come w/ any for the Mac). Apple System Profiler identifies the Card
Name as "pcie55,2928."

I plugged in and powered on all the USB devices I own: Apple keyboard (w/
Apple optical mouse attached), Palm serial-to-USB connector, Canon printer
and the USB connector from my APC UPS battery backup (all USB 1.1 devices).
All devices were recognized and functioned properly. All devices were
unplugged, then re-plugged, and were re-recognized w/o issue (hot swap).

In OSX 10.2.8, with all devices connected and powered, the Mac successfully
booted, deep-slept, re-awoke and shutdown. The same when no devices were
attached. That's good news for this card and OSX.

Deep sleep in OS 9.2.2 was a different story. The monitor and the hard
drive(s) would power down, but the fans and the motherboard (along w/ PCI
and AGP slots) would not. That's not too bad, but after repeated attempts,
my Mac refused to reawake without freezing. Bad news for this card and
OS9.2.2.

Next, to test whether USB devices that write to memory interfere w/ sleep
(drives, card readers, etc.), I borrowed a bus-powered Iomega USB (1.1) ZIP
100 drive, a really old USB floppy drive and a LaCie USB 2.0 CD-R burner. In
OSX, while these devices were plugged into the *built-in* USB ports, the
Mac deep-slept and re-awoke without any problems. Not so while plugged into
the USB card. In every case, the Mac would only go into lite-sleep, and then
refused to wakeup, requiring a reset.

My question: If Apple can make deep sleep work with all classes of USB
devices using the built-in ports, why can't they make it work with ports on
USB PCI cards? (due to some cards not supporting power down mode, the same is
true of *some* types/brands of graphics cards, IDE cards, SCSI cards, etc.-Mike)

System Profiler listed the USB 2.0 CD-R burner as a "High Speed" device, so
I assume 10.2.8 has native support for USB 2.0 speeds with this card. USB 2
is not supported in OS9.

Bottom line for this card: If you are willing to plug your memory-writing
USB devices into the Mac's built-in ports and you only use OSX 10.2.8 and
higher (for native 2.0 speeds), then $11 for this card is not too bad. But
if you work in OS9 and/or want to use this card w/ memory writing USB
hardware in OSX, you'll have to unplug your device after you're done using
it, or disable sleep.

So, dear reader, my curiosity got the best of me and I went out and bought
the SIIG 5-port USB 2.0 card (#JU-P50212; $39; Ouch!). Would SIIG's "perfect
sleeper" claim prove true?? In a word: No. The SIIG card behaved *exactly*
the same as the no-name card, in both OSX and OS9, with all the same sleep
successes and failures.

My solution was to keep the $11 card, plug any memory writing USB devices
into the Mac's built-in USB ports (the keyboard can also be plugged into the
card, freeing up another built-in port) and to turn off sleep while in OS9.<
-Tom in Colorado"

MacAlly 5 Port USB 2.0 Card (warning on Macally driver install)

(added 10/16/2003)"
Mike,
Just installed a Macally 5 port USB 2.0 Hi-Speed PCI card in my G4/933 running 10.2.8. Installed the card first, booted with a printer and scanner plugged into the USB card, everything was fine.
Inserted the included CD with drivers for the card, ran the installer. Upon restart, the computer froze 5 seconds into the gray apple on white background replacing the apple with a circle w/slash through it. 2 hard restarts and a hold power button until shutdown/restart with no change.

Restarted again with option button down, chose my backup internal drive with 10.2.6, and went to MacallyÕs website. Found this
www.macally.com/techsupport/faq/faq_usb2controller.html
with the exact description of my crash. The fix page has the user logging in as root and removing drivers manually, then installing updated drivers.
After pointing out that the freeze comes before the login screen, their e-mail tech support suggested holding option on restart and selecting OS 9, which isn't a choice since only OS X boot volumes show up. Pity the fool with no OS 9 boot disc and a single drive :-/
(or a Mac that can't boot to OS 9 like many new models)
The tech support did point out that their driver isnÕt necessary with the 10.2.8 update.
Richard S.
"

There was a note in the news page a week or two ago about 10.2.8 (and later) having
USB 2.0 drivers for some chipsets (like NEC).

Ratoc PCIFS3 Firewire + UW SCSI Combo Card:

(added 10/14/2003)"
this may appear off-topic, but I have been having troubles (reproducably) with the PCIFS3 Firewire & UW-SCSI combo board made by Ratoc (ratocsystems.com):

Testing it in my PowerMac Dual G4 800 (Quicksilver of 2001) and in an old beige PowerMac G3 233 Desktop (Beige G3 does not support "deep" sleep), both with Mac OS X 10.2.x (pre 10.2.8) installed, revealed the problem of the entire system stalling when the machines woke up from deep sleep _with_ _drives_ _connected_ to either Firewire or SCSI port(s).
(I asked if the problem was seen w/o devices connected)

However, in normal operation (with "sleep" being deactivated in the "Energy Saver" prefs), the board worked flawlessly, at least with Firewire devices I tested (Oxford 900/911 equipped harddrives, an Epson Perfection 3200 scanner) and in the Dual G4 also with several SCSI drives (U-80 and U-160 hard disks).

Ratoc's Tech Support has been quick with responses, and the product itself comes very well equipped. But we didn't find a solution so far.

I still want to test it on an Umax Pulsar (604e processor, Mac OS 9.1), but don't have any time right now. (older macs don't support deep sleep however)

Hopefully this was of any help and Ratoc releases some firmware update to fix the problem...
regards - Nils"

I wonder if the card even has a flash rom on it.

Sonnet Tango (FW/USB 2.0 combo) Card:

(added 10/14/2003)"
Hi Mike; RE USB/FireWire Combo PCI cards, I have a Tango (Sonnet) that I have
installed in my S900L G4/400. I popped it out of there, and into my Gigabit
Ethernet G4/500MP desktop, and the verdict is NO: it does *not* support deep
sleep in the Gigabit G4/500. The message comes up, as usual, "your machine
has one or more devices that don't support deep sleep"...
(I asked if this happened even with no devices connected to the card-Mike)

I've had various PCI cards installed in the Gigabit over the years (3+ years
old now), and the only ones that allowed deep sleep were my Formac
ProFormance3 card (which used to support my Silicon Graphics 1600SW display);
the present video card, a Radeon Mac Edition 8500 64MB Twin Head video card
(that I use to drive both the SGI 1600SW & my Hitachi 21" CRT) and the OEM
Adaptec 2930CU SCSI PCI card. All those PCI cards worked to allow deep sleep;
anything else does not.
David
"

Orange Micro Orangelink+ USB2.0/Firewire PCI Card

(added 10/14/2003)"
Mike, An update on the FW400 PCI card situation for me...
Once again, my situation is (or has been) that one of the firewire
ports (only 1) on my g4 sawtooth has died. So I decided to look for a
PCI FW400 card fearing that the other port would go at any time. My
external HD had started acting weird when plugged into the remaining
FW400 port so I was worried. I use deep sleep all of the time so it's
important to me that deep sleep function. If it wasn't for the fact
that I had recently installed a Mercury Extreme 1.4Ghz card (before the
firewire problems) I would consider replacing this machine right now.

I ordered an Orange Micro Orangelink+ USB2.0/Firewire PCI Card from
NewEgg over the weekend and received it a couple of days ago. This is a
FW400 card. I selected the card as it was mentioned as supporting deep
sleep in at least one report on 7/9/2003 on your site. That was with
OSX 10.2.6 and with a stock processor.

I'm running 10.2.8 and (as mentioned) the OWC 1.4Ghz G4 cpu. Well, the
Orange Micro card doesn't support deep sleep at all. In fact, it
doesn't support light sleep either when there is a device (in this
case, a Belkin bluetooth adapter) plugged in to one of the card's USB
ports--in that case, the system just hangs and can only be rebooted
with the reset button.
In the end, I have been unable to even test
firewire because either my drive is not been recognized under 10.2.8
(I asked if he was running Default Folder - which caused
Disk Utility to not see any drives as noted in a past
news page)
(and there seem to be reports of this type of behavior if you check
Apple's discussions
http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@228.cOWGa66jgG4.27@.599a732d).
Of course, it could be that the
firewire bridge in the drive (FW/IDE bridge board in the FW case) has died...but I don't have another system to check it with, this is a Buslink drive with a built-in CF card
reader and CF cards don't show up on the desktop either).

I'm thinking about ordering the FW Depot FW400/USB2 card mentioned in
their email on your site but their return policy is kind of convoluted.

I'll update you if I make any progress. This is one of those situations
where I really wish Apple would build the Pro gear (that is, the tower
cases) so that none of the ports are on the logic board and everything
can be replaced...but then they wouldn't sell as many new Macs if the
things didn't blow up every now and then!
-mark
"

MacAlly 5 Port USB 2.0 Card (note: see the later report above with a warning about installing the Macally drivers.)

(added 10/10/2003)"
I have a MacAlly 5 ports USB 2.0 Hi-speed PCI card in a DA Powermac
with a Gigadesigns 1GHz. There is no issue of deep sleep. I cannot
say whether the USB works at the 480 kpbs speed since I don't have any
devices for it, but it works at the regular full speed.
Thanks, Jb Blanc
"

See below for previous reports on MacAlly Combo FW/USB 2.0 cards.

(added 10/10/2003)"
With all of the conversations going on in various threads online, we have
determined after doing some testing that the following FireWire Depot PCI
host adapters can go into deep sleep:

The conclusion we have discovered is that only PCI Host Adapters with a PCI
-to- PCI bridge can go into deep sleep.

We are continuing our tests and investigation.

FireWire Depot is also close to releasing a firmware update for the 1394b
PCI-800 host adapter cards. (see previous reports that noted no deep sleep
support with FW800 PCI cards) We have added sleep/spindown support in
firmware v2.15, which we have just finishing verification on. We feel very
confident about it as it has passed all our tests so far (except one case
noted below).

v2.15 also fixes a issue in Mac OS 10.2.x when you connect thru a 1394b
hub/repeater to a 1394b host and you power on the bridge and drive after all
the cables are hooked up which causes the drive to not show up. We found
that just hooking the cable to the hub with the drive powered on worked
fine, but power on after is an issue. Now both power on after and cable
connect while powered on work fine in v2.15. The exception case that we just
discovered today with v2.15 is if you are using specific 1394b cables from
one vendor and connect thru a hub/repeater and the cable from the host to
the hub is a certain length and the one from the hub to the drive is a
certain length, then under Mac OS 10.2.x only on some specific G4 and G5
setups do you get a error in copying files. The same cable lengths from
other vendors work fine. We have a v2.16 version we are testing now that
fixed it on our G5 system, but we need to verify it and that will take a 1-2
weeks for complete testing so stay tuned.

We will be releasing the v2.15 sometime next week and making it available
thru our website (http://www.fwdepot.com)
(FWDepot Sales)
"

I welcome any reader reports on the firmware update/FW800 cards or the other
models listed.

(added 10/10/2003)"
Hi Mike,
We've looked at lots of USB 2.0 cards. This was part of an investigation
for product we're just about to ship. What we found is
that the "sleep hang" problem is more a function of what you have attached
to the card when you go to sleep, than any specific card vendor, or Mac
model that you are using. (note mac towers before the 1999 G4/AGP model
do not support deep sleep period.-Mike) The "sleep hang" happens consistently when there
is a storage class device is connected (memory card reader, disk-on-key,
hard drive). Keyboards and mice are no problem. I believe printers are OK,
but am not certain about scanners or other devices. By the way, this is the
same behavior on USB 1.1 PCI cards, so it is not due to USB 2.0 per se.
(name withheld by request)
"

I ask for reports to test without any devices connected in case the
issue is a connected device. however some have noted in the past that
installing USB 2.0 drivers may also affect this. (10.2.8 and later
have native USB 2.0 support for some chipsets.)
With firewire PCI cards (and many combo cards) - especially FW800 cards - even without any devices connected the card itself may not allow deep sleep. The card itself has to support
power down mode. No FW800 cards I have seen or
readers have used to date supports deep sleep for instance, but
I'm hoping that will change.

Wiebetech Firewire 800 PCI card

(added 10/9/2003)"
I have wiebetech firewire 800 PCI card,
doesn't support deep sleep. I had to take it out.
also with the card in the apple hardware test fails,
logic board problem.
without the PCI card everything is fine;
I had to take it out.
when if ever, I will be able to use my 800 firewire devices with my
1Ghz DP G4? Is it a problem with all the cards?
or is it operating system?
Marek"

So far I have had no FW800 PCI card reports that noted deep sleep worked.
One reader said he was told that the Orange Micro FW800 card supported deep sleep
but I never heard back if he actually tested that. (As noted here before, despite
some companies saying their cards supported deep sleep, owners reported
that they didn't.) Still waiting for a FW800 PCI card report that
deep sleep worked.

First test SLEEP. Put the Mac to deep sleep and everything was OK. Woke
the MAC from sleep and everything was OK.

Second test, accesories. I connected my Lexmark Z55 printer, Umax 3400U
Scanner and Kodak DX3215 Camera and tried them all, everything OK, put
the MAC to sleep with all accessories ON and everything was OK, on wake
up also.

No extra drivers used (Orange Micro, etc...)
This was a simple plug and play.
I don't know about the speed transfer (1.1 or 2.0) as I don't know how
to verify this.
FloI asked if he knew what the chipset was/if ASP reported any
details on it)
Chipset used is a NEC. ASP doesn't mention anything in particular about the card, not NEC or
Belkin, but from the time it works this is good news."

10.2.8 I think has USB 2.0 support for some chipsets like the NEC, otherwise
speeds would be limited to USB 1.x rates (1.5MB/sec max interface rate, usually less in real-world/actual use). Odd that ASP didn't list any details (expand the arrow on the
PCI device in the Devices tab in ASP). I asked if he later tests with USB 2.0 devices
to report back if >USB 1.x speeds were seen.

Adesso Inc. USB 2.0 5-port Card
(I missed this one in my inbox until today - sent
a few days ago)

(added 10/1/2003)"
I have a rather generic "Adesso Inc." USB 2.0 5 port PCI host card in
my MDD dual 867mhz G4. The card has an NEC controller chip. With OS X
10.2.8, I am able to deep sleep fine as long as a drive (or flash card
reader) is not connected to the card. I can connect my USB 1.1 HP
scanner and various other non-storage USB devices to the card and deep
sleep fine with them connected! But, if I attempt to put the Mac to
sleep with a drive attached (even if the drive is not mounted), the
system spins down the hard drives and powers down the monitors, but the
fans do not spin down and the system freezes (never wakes up). A hard
shutdown/reboot is necessary.

Also, this has been mentioned already, but under 10.2.8 with no
additional drivers installed, my USB 2.0 flash card reader does operate
in "high speed" mode and I get faster transfer rates than via "full
speed" mode connected to the Mac's built-in USB ports.
- Mike G.
"

(added 10/1/2003 - updated 2/24/2004)"
Having found that the FireWire Depot IOI-4343T 3-port firewire card
(see 9/26/2003 report below) and the Keyspan FPCI-3N Firewire card (see
9/18/2003 report below) did not allow my 533MHz PowerMac G4 (MacOS X
10.2.6) to deep sleep, I tried a Macally FH2-UF24 combo
USB-2/Firewire card (2 external 1349a OHCI ports and 2 external
USB-2.0 ports plus some internal ports; power connector).
The news is much better on this card. Mostly it allows deep sleep with no
problems (with or without my FW hard drive attached). I do have two
issues with the card:

If my Lexar Firewire Compact Flash reader is plugged in when I try
to put the computer to sleep, the computer hangs and needs a hard
reset. So I leave this device unplugged unless I'm using it. I hope a
MacOS X update may fix the problem.

The power connector doesn't feel like it makes good contact. The
pins are very short, and I suspect they're marginal. However, my
ohm-meter does show contact (at the very last second as the connector
is plugged in), so it may be providing useful power. I'm not sure. I
intend to contact the company. (if possible, I'd try to crimp the
socket contacts in the molex plug to see if that would help make
a tighter connection-Mike)

Note that I have not tested the USB ports at all. Nor have I
installed the supplied drivers (which are necessary for high-speed
USB support under MacOS X 10.2.6 but will NOT allow deep sleep
according to the documentation).

From what several vendors have said, every computer seems to be
different as far as deep sleep goes, so your mileage may vary.
-- Russell
(Digital Audio G4/533MHz PowerMac, MacOS X 10.2.6)
Update: On Feb. 24th, 2004 he sent an update:

Here is an update on (the MacAlly FW/USB 2.0 card), if you are interested (though the
corruption issues dwarf any sleep issues in my opinion!):

I have since found that the card prevents deep sleep if my MO drive
is plugged into it (I haven't tried that using the external power
supply, I just leave the MO drive disconnected). So that means of my
three FW devices (hard disk, MO drive and compact flash card reader),
the computer reliably hangs if the MO drive or compact flag card
reader is attached (if I detach the device the computer usually
recovers in a minute or two). It usually sleeps but occasionally
hangs if the hard drive is attached. It always sleeps if no FW device
is attached.

(here's a copy of his other mail on data corruption issues
with a FW drive and a bus powered canon scanner connected to the card)

I was getting file corruption when copying data from an external FW
400 drive to my internal hard drive, and I finally found a solution.

With the scanner plugged into a USB port on the FH2-UF24 card, I
consistently get data corruption when copying files from the external
FW drive to my internal hard drive. Using a fancier-looking FW cable
and the external drive's optional power supply makes no difference. I
see the problem on a lot of files, but one good test case is a 40Mb
installer.

With the scanner unplugged, or plugged into a built-in USB port,
there is no corruption.

All these tests were with the external FW drive plugged into the
MacAlly FW/USB card. I could not test for corruption using the
built-in FW ports because those are dead.

The scary thing is plenty of other users may have this problem and no
know it, because Finder does not verify copies!

I might never have noticed it myself except I was using Synchronize
Pro X (with verification enabled). Once I saw the problem, I
confirmed it by copying the files using Finder and Retrospect. Both
had the same problem (Finder was silent about it, but the copy and
the original were different).

Questions include: do all users of this particular card have this
problem? Does it occur with other combo FW/USB cards? Does it matter which scanner is attached (so long as the OS is listening to the scanner)?

MacAlly is looking into the problem. I won't hear anything from them
for several weeks. I hope they can do something (such as fix the
problem or trade me for two cards, one FW-only and one USB 2.0-only).
Meanwhile, I have my scanner plugged into one of the (slow) built-in
USB ports.
Regards,
-- Russell
"

(Update - two other owners of this card also wrote they have seen data corruption problems.) I asked if he had another (AC powered) Firewire drive to test with and if the MacAlly card had an Aux power connector. (It did he later said and he was using a PS connection to the card but mentioned loose contacts (poor mating connection fit, although a meter showed no open ckt) - so I suggested trying to crimp the sockets a bit.) Since the scanner is bus powered I wanted to rule out that as a factor. I also asked if he had any scanner button manager software installed - i.e. polling the device and if so try uninstalling it to see if that mattered. (he later said it did) I hate that sort of software running in the background, with my canon USB bus powered scanner I only run the PShop import/twain software.
BTW - I've had some G5 owners report data corruption even with onboard USB ports in some configurations (some past reports on copying data from Digital cameras/CF cards on the G5 FW/USB feedback page) that at least one reader said was due to suspect RAM. (Removing recently added RAM solved the problem.)
If any other FW/USB combo card owner has seen corruption like this, let me know. (Include system/OS/device details in reports. thanks)

(added 9/29/2003 - see later update below this initial report also)"
Mike, I have a 733Mhz Quicksilver that I've updated with OS 10.2.8. When I
read on your site that 10.2.8 was suppose to support USB 2 (for certain chipsets
- but not the UHCI like the VIA chip - see reader comments in the Sept. 11th, 2003 news page-Mike), I decided
to go out and buy a card and try it.
I bought a SIIG USB 2.0 + Firewire
+ 10/100 Combo Adapter at CompUSA (model number JU-2NE012). CompUSA has
the card on sale for $39.95 (after a $40 instant rebate). I installed
the card, rebooted and checked System Profiler. The card showed up. I
then timed a scan with my Epson 2400 using USB 1.1. I then switched the
scanner to the new SIIG card and the scanner showed up in System
Profiler. I did another scan which was considerably faster (10 seconds
vs. about 60 seconds). So I ascertain I have a USB connection to my
scanner.

Now for the acid test. I selected sleep and the computer went
into deep sleep. On top of that, the scanner also went into sleep
(which it never did before). (I assume they came out of deep sleep OK)

Now on to Firewire. I hooked up two
Firewire drives (one externally cased hard drive and one externally
cased DVD drive). Both showed up in System Profiler, both mounted. Both
would unmount, but as long as the drives were turned on, the computer
would not go into deep sleep (just "screen off", fans still running,
sleep).

Lastly I thought I'd try the ethernet connection. I removed the
cable from the built-in port and plugged it into the card. The lights
flashed on the card, but I couldn't setup an internet connection
through the Network Preferences (couldn't get in IP from my router,
using DHCP). I didn't count on this working, but, I decided to look at
the docs that came on the driver CD (all PC stuff). The readme on the
disk for the networking portion said the chipset was a Realtek chipset.
So, I fired up my browser and went to the Realtek webpage. I was able
to find a Mac OS 10.2 version of the Realtek chipset (RTL 8139)! I
about fainted. I downloaded the driver, decompression it, loaded it,
restarted the Mac, reconnected the ethernet cable to the SIIG card,
checked the Network Preferences and I had an IP address!! Fired Safari
backup and was online!

So I'm a happy camper. Didn't really need the
extra Firewire port, but will use it knowing that I need to turn off
anything connected to it before I sleep the computer.
You've got a great site. Keep up the good work!
Mark D. Georges, Manager
Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)
(On Sept. 30th he sent an email with an update)

Mike, Disaster struck tonight when I woke up my Quicksilver. I have a two monitor setup (one Radeon 8500). When I woke the computer up, one monitor woke up, but the monitor that has the dialog box for my password did not. I could not completely wake the machine up. So, I did a hard reset. During the boot process, everything seemed normal for a couple of seconds until a strange blue 1/4 inch by 1.5 inch bar showed up above the gray "Apple". Booting halted. I did another hard reset, and got the same thing. I tried everything I could think of to get the computer to boot (removed the SIIG card, boot into rom, etc.), but it would never get by the blue bar. I finally booted off a firewire drive with a backup of my boot disk, ran disk first aid (repaired permissions and repaired the drive), shut down, and rebooted. Same blue bar. I finally reinstalled OS 10.2.8, repaired permissions again, shut down, and restarted. Everything was back to normal. Since I originally only wanted USB 2 (didn't care about having another firewire port and ethernet port) I installed a generic CompUSA 5 port USB card I had bought when I bought the SIIG. This card has the NEC chipset and the box even says it supports Mac OS 10.X. The card works great with the 10.2.8 drivers (a CD in the box also provided a USB2EHCI_v3_1_2 driver). The card sleeps and wakes from sleep (at least for now), both by selecting sleep and letting the computer go to sleep on its own.

2nd try: a IOI-4343T card from FireWire Depot. This is a PCI card
with 3 external 1394a ports. It is OHCI and has direct power (i.e.
from the power supply instead of the PCI bus, a plus in my book). The
company assured me it should allow sleep, but alas it does not on my
computer (again, a 533MHz PowerMac G4, MacOS X 10.2.6). It does,
however, allows the computer to wake up from shallow sleep more
reliably than the Keyspan card. The company is being very good about
taking it back, paying return shipping.

My next attempt will be a Macally FH2-UF24 (2 external 1349a ports
and 2 USB-2.0 ports plus some internal ports; direct power). Two
other people say it works in this report, so there's hope. I really
wanted 3 external FW ports, but deep sleep is more important to me.
If that card can't sleep I'll probably keep it and live with turning
off the computer when not in use.
-- Russell"

(added 9/18/2003)"
I got a Keyspan FPCI-3N Firewire card (3 ports, 400Mps, OHCI, no
extra power connector) when my built in ports died. The card has 3
external ports and one internal which auto-switches with one of the
external ports (though there is no documentation saying which). The
card works fine, but it definitely does NOT support deep sleep on my
533MHz PowerMac G4 running MacOS X 10.2.6. I have not tried booting
into MacOS 9. It makes no difference whether devices are plugged in
or unplugged.

When I tell the computer to sleep it turns off the monitor, but the
fans are still going and the Firewire devices (connected to the card,
my built in ports are fried) are on. I'm not sure about the internal
hard drive.

Waking the computer from this state is challenging. Pushing the power
button seems to work reliably (so far) but often the keyboard is
ignored. I power down the computer now when not in use but this is
not acceptable long term so I intend to return the card and try one
from Firewire Depot (which I'm assured will support deep sleep; we'll
see).
-- Russell"

(added 9/12/2003)"
I've been on the hunt for a FireWire PCI card for my dual 1.25 that supports
Deep Sleep. The only thing I can find is the FireWire/USB 2 combo card from
MacAlly. I called MacAlly and they confirmed that this is the only card they
have that supports deep sleep. The 3 and 6 port cards do not support it.

I also talked with Orange Micro and they mentioned that it's something they
are looking into.

(he later wrote)
I bought the MacAlly FireWire/USB 2 combo card
because their tech support claimed it supported deep sleep and I'm glad to
confirm this is the case. I've got it in my Dual G4 1.25 rev 1 and it works
great. Something they did note is that this is the only FireWire card of
theirs that supports deep sleep.

The only reason I wanted a card was because of all the extra FireWire
devices I've been getting, iPod, iSight, DV camera, hard drive, FireWire
card reader, etc. Hubs generally blow in my experience as a consultant and
since I've got slots, why not use those instead.

My next hunt will be finding a FireWire 800 card that supports deep sleep.
I'll let you know of one when I find it as I will be doing tests on it.
Take care,
Brandon"

One reader recently said that Orangeware told him the Orange Micro FW800 card
does support deep in OS X - but I don't know anyone that's proven that.
(so far all FW800 card reports from every other brand (Lacie, Sonnet, OWC, etc. so I'm
leery of the claims on the OM FW800 card until proven by a user.)

(added 9/12/2003)"
Hello,
I found your report AFTER I had installed a USB PCI card and
experienced sleep issues. I got some good information there. Thanks.

Here's my experience:
I purchased a "generic" 7-port USB 2.0 PCI adapter card because it was
cheaper than a 4-port external hub and wouldn't require the use of an
external AC adapter. Installation was easy enough and the card worked
just fine. (note: as of OS X 10.2.6 at least, without USB 2.0 drivers
a USB 2.0 card won't run at higher than USB 1.1 rates.-Mike)
However, it prevented my Mac from sleeping properly--
monitor would switch off but CPU fans stayed on. The machine then would
be unable to wake, requiring me to "manually" switch off and then
restart. Furthermore, the machine wouldn't respond to "warm" restarts--
choosing restart from the Apple menu had no effect whatsoever.

I discovered, that by removing the USB powered Zip100 drive and Epson
scanner, but leaving the Handspring cradle connected, the machine
returned to normal behavior. (Also, removing ALL devices from the card
returned normal behavior.) The Handspring cradle functioned properly
after waking the G4. It seems that devices that draw a relatively high
current prevent proper sleep and restart behavior. Weird. Hopefully
this is something that can be fixed with the Panther release of OS X.

Of further interest is that there is NO USB 2.0 support for this card.
Neither the distributor, Intek21, or the OEM, AVLAB Technology, provide
Mac drivers. They instead point users to Apple.com for support. (And,
of course, Apple doesn't yet support USB 2) This is all fine for me
since i don't have any USB 2 devices-- that's what FireWire is for,
right? ;^)
Profile:
G4 MDD 1GHz with FW 800, 1.25GB memory
OS X 10.2.6 (plus security updates)
USB card: Intek21 (OEM'ed by Taiwanese AVLAB Technology, inc.)
-Beej
"

The Thursday Sept. 11th, 2003 www.xlr8yourmac.com news page noted
that USB 2.0 drivers are said to be in later OS X versions (10.2.8 and
10.3) but not sure they will support every USB 2.0 chipset card.
Since some FW800 MDD Macs were reported as having a NEC USB 2.0
controller chip, I asked if he had tried the Orange Micro USB 2.0 OS X drivers,
although I almost hesitate to suggest that since one FW800 MDD owner
reported a black screen at boot after installing them (run repair
permissions after any OS X update also but that may not have
helped). One Dual 1.42GHz/FW800 MDD owner said the OM USB 2.0
drivers worked for him (I assume he tested the onboard USB
to verify it then delivered USB 2.0 speeds with a USB 2.0
drive.)

(added 9/12/2003)"
Mike, I thought you might want to let your readers know that PC Micro is selling
their "house brand" 5 port USB 2.0 PCI card for $9.00 again. I purchased one
of these a couple of months ago and it has worked flawlessly with the Orange Micro (OS X) drivers.
Using an external FW/USB 2.0 HD I did a quick and dirty timing on a transfer of a 100MB directory on my G4 (digital audio with 1.2 GHz CPU upgrade). Firewire took around 10 seconds, USB 2.0 around 12 seconds. Not too shabby.
Cheers, Steven P."

I asked Steve if the card supports deep sleep and he said yes, but he had tested sleep only with all USB devices disconnected. He later wrote:

"
Here are the remaining details on the USB 2.0 card. First of all, the one
I've got is made by Cendyne. The model number is not apparent on the
packaging. At any rate, the "house brand" designation implies they may
substitute other brands.

With a drive attached the system will not go into deep sleep and in fact it
locks up when attempting to. The monitor goes to sleep but the fans do not
stop and the power button doesn't pulsate. A hard reset is required. This
happens with an either an external HD or a floppy connected, even if no
volume is mounted. With only non-storage devices connected the machine
enters and wakes from deep sleep reliably.
Steve
"

(Some of the following reports were sent in July, just
getting time to add them now)

Machine goes into deep-sleep mode (totally silent, all drives and
fans powered down) without a problem. There don't seem to be any
issues when my Mac wakes up either. I have had the card for
approximately three months.
-Brera

(I asked if USB devices were connected when the sleep test was run.)
Yup! The following devices are always attached:
Canon i320 Printer (always switched on as it lacks an auto-shutoff facility).
Andrea USB NC-7100 noise cancelling microphone as supplied with
ViaVoice for Mac OS X.

The following devices are attached to the onboard USB ports:
Apple DVI to ADC adapter.
Standard Apple keyboard as supplied with my G4 400 AGP DVI.

The hub in the keyboard has the following devices fitted:
Apple Pro Mouse (optical).
D-Link DWB-120M Bluetooth adapter.

I also have an Adaptec 2930CU SCSI PCI card fitted to my G4.

My Mac has failed to wake up on two or three occasions in the last
few months but given that I put the machine to sleep numerous times
each day (it is housed in a domestic context and the fan noise is
pretty intrusive), I guess this is to be expected.

Just keeping my fingers crossed that 10.2.7 has native USB 2.0
support given Apple's current hardware lineup.
Thanks for the great site!
-Brera
"

I asked if he tried sleep tests with no USB devices connected (other than
apple's keyboard/mouse, etc. on the onboard USB ports)

I got the USB/FIREWIRE combo card from Firewire Direct. I had quite a
bit of dialog with them before I purchased it, and they were very
accomodating. Turns out I had previously used cards and hubs from
orange Micro that had shorted out my other system

Whats great is that it has an internal Firewire and USB port as well.
I attached a micro hub to one and have all of my dongles in that. So
they are internal and not external for added security....

I never had sleep issues with this card, only with the Acard raid card,
but that was remedied with a patch from the manufacter. (firmware update or driver update -
Acard released a driver update for OS X/deep sleep support some time
back noted in the news here and on the feedback page/article linked
on the IDE topics page, controllers section.-Mike)
For a while I've had various sleep issues, but for the past 6 months
they have been remedied by both apple and these manufacters

Author A.
"

This is an older mac report on general sleep tests - only Macs
after the B&W G3/Yike G4 PCI support deep sleep. (iMacs, ibooks, Powerbook G3s, G4/AGP towers, etc.)

If I select Sleep from the Special menu, only the display (Samsung 570V TFT)
goes to sleep-- and that only after an unusual 7-10 second delay, during
which "Special" is highlighted in the menu bar. However-- if, after the
display goes to sleep, I wake it, then select Sleep a second time in the
Special menu, the system and display both go to sleep immediately. Later
wakening is normal.
Al F.
"

I'm hoping a OM FW800 card owner can report back if it really does support
deep sleep.

(added 9/12/2003)"I just tried a Belkin F5U219 USB 2.0 card (2+1 ports) with no luck.
Works with apples generic USB 1.1 driver, but does not wake up after
sleep.
With Orange Micro's 3.1.2 drivers same as above.
With OM and .ktext hack, adding pci1799,2 = kernelpanic.
With the old OM drivers just USB 1 speed and no wakeup
With the OSX generic PCI card drivers = noboot.
best regards,
Vegard
(I asked if he had tested with no USB devices connected and what Mac model he used.)
I have a Dual 1.42GHz with 1024MB ram and Radeon 9700. OS X.2.6 with
all updates.

It didn't wake up as long as the card was installed, devices connected
or not.
Vegard
"

(added 9/10/2003)"
I'm using a Belkin USB 2.0 five port card with Orange Micro's drivers
(NEC chipset) After installing the card, I could not put my G4
sawtooth to sleep, until I unplugged the devices attached to it. Now
the unit goes to sleep and wakes up with no problems. Whenever I need
to use my USB 2.0 devices, I simply plug them in. It doesn't matter if
you unplug from the card or the device, as long as the device is not
attached the system will go to sleep properly. Plugging in the
device(s) while asleep will wake up the unit.

BTW, I've had great performance from my Belkin 2.0 card. My Iomega
Panther CD-RW now burns and reads at its top rated speed, with no
errors.
Ted
"

(added 8/8/2003)"
I have a G4 400 AGP with 10.2.6
my Acard ATA 133 card, and iogear GIC250U USB 2 card DO support deep sleep
but my Belkin F5U501-MAC firewire 400 card DOES NOT SUPPORT DEEP SLEEP.
-CMM
(I asked him if (and whose) USB 2.0 drivers were installed in OS X. No USB 2.0
support in OS 9.x, but OS X support for USB 2.0 speeds still requires
USB 2.0 drivers as far as I know as of 10.2.6 at least-Mike)
I can't remember the exact drivers I installed, but I seem to remember
being a little confused and installing both the drivers from iogear,
and orange micro's usb2 drivers to be safe. (I don't have any usb2
devices to test if the high speed is working.)
"

I installed the ADS Technologies USB Turbo 2.0 (5 port) PCI card. It
was 40 bucks at Circuit City. The included drivers did nothing, and
ADS doesn't have any Mac drivers on their web site. The card operates
at USB1.1 speed with the supplied driver. And there were sleep problems
(which I later solved).
With OrangeMicro drivers (version 3.1.2) the ADS card works PERFECT.
The Epson scanner does scans in about half the time, and I am burning
cd's at 52 speed. yey. And since I solved the sleep problem, my
computer sleeps like a baby.

Actually, I think it is amazing that the IOMagic cd burner works at all
on a Mac. This PC device, which I traded for a fuzz-box, is completely
unsupported on the mac and does not have a driver. That means it
shouldn't work. But in Toast I am able to burn a cd at 52 speed and
have it verify. Which is all I need it to do. Actually, if I try to do
anything else with it, I crash. Badly. It cannot read a disk or play a
music cd. It doesn't work with the finder, or diskburner. I haven't
tried itunes, because I know it wouldn't work. haha. I'm just so happy
it works perfectly in Toast. I simply turn it OFF after burning the
disks. no problems. (I also have internal DVD/CD ROM and an older
10/4/32 Sony FireWire burner)

But your question was about sleep, not about which cards actually
achieved 2.0 speed. I have tried all the ways to crash my new system,
and I think I am now the expert on what you want to know.
The problem is the unsupported USB2 cd burner. My guess is that since
it has no driver, the OS cannot know how to make the device sleep, and
thus crashes. When I turn off or unplug the unsupported cd burner, my
computer sleeps fine. With the device on, it crashes on sleep. I don't
think the problem lies with the PCI card.

And speaking of sleep, the Epson 1660 scanner sleeps GREAT plugged into
the ADS card. I guess, because it is a supported device. One of the few
USB2 devices that is supported by Apple. The cool thing is, that now,
with sleep, the scanner's power light shuts off. And turns on when
woken. I like it. When plugged directly into the G4, the light would
stay on thru sleep. A very minor, totally meaningless observation. Who
cares about the faster scans?

I can also report on the Adaptec 5100 USB2CONNECT PCI card. I had
previously installed this card. No sleep problems. But it runs at
USB1.1 speed. Even in OS 10.2.6. Adaptec doesn't have a driver, and
other available drivers didn't work. But Customer Service was gracious,
and offered me a refund. Very nice. They said the card doesn't support
drivers and they are working with Apple for a solution. Until then, the
card is USB1.1 for all Mac systems. (see previous reports below from
OM USB2.0 cards which have OS X USB 2.0 drivers. Also some other brands
apparently use the same NEC USB 2.0 chipset and are compatible with their
drivers-Mike)

Also, I plan to try the OrangeMicro card. I hope it works as well as
the ADS card/ OrangeMicro driver combination. Because It is WRONG that
ADS doesn't supply working drivers for their cards!!!
And I'll certainly let you know if gives my computer insomnia. Aren't
you glad you asked?
Jason
(New York City)he later wrote)

Thanks for posting my letter.
Reading the other posts started me looking at the chipsets. Both the
ADS and the Adaptec cards use the NEC chip. The chips look the same,
but the card and the circuit look very different. I tried installing
the Adaptec card again, with the OrangeMicro 312 driver still
installed. Once again, USB1.1, and Toast will do max 4 speed burn.
While the Adaptec card was installed, I make it sleep crash with the
IOMagic CD burner. Just for fun. If you want to test the sleep crash
phenomenon, you should buy an IOMagic burner. hehe.
But just by looking at the cards, the ADS, OrangeMicro and SIIG cards
look similar. Similar features. Some other cards also. I always
suspected they were repackaged from the same manufacturer. I'm not
surprised the OrangeMicro driver works for them all. But the Adaptec
card is still a mystery. If anyone has gotten 2.0 speed out of the
Adaptec card, please post.

My question is: What is the legality of using the OrangeMicro driver on
their competitors' device? I called OrangeWare, and they said that ADS
does not license the driver from them. And that OrangeWare doesn't make
the version 6.0.2 driver that ADS uses (for some reason I thought maybe
they did). He seemed surprised the 3.1.2 driver even worked with the
ADS card, but didn't seem bothered. Still, I wouldn't want to break the
law, or void the warrantee.

In response to GeorgeS, with the PNY Card reader: That device is not
listed as supported by Apple. Here is the page on the Apple site that
lists compatibility:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/devices.html
Click on the Digital Camera link and there is a list of Media Readers
that are supported. Did the Card Reader claim to have Mac
compatibility? Otherwise it may be problematic. You may have to unplug
the device after using it.
I went to the PNY website. It is strange that they list Mac support for
the single readers, but don't mention it for multi-readers. As if to
imply that the mult-readers aren't supported. I wonder why not. Here is
the link:
http://www.pny.com/products/flash/cardreaders.asp
Jason"

Even though some vendors may not list Mac compatibility with their
readers - it may or may not work (depending on chipset used).
The drive compatibility database here can be searched for reader reports
on multi-format card readers (as well as single device types)

(added 7/10/2003)"
I have a 5 port (4 external 1 internal) Belkin USB 2.0 pci card in my
g4 AGP graphics. There are no mac drivers for the card, but it does not
seem to need any. It will deep sleep in 10.2.6. I do not have any USB 2
devices to test the speeds with.. so i do not know what speed the card
is running at. The ports work very well, and haven't given me any
trouble in the month i've been running the card.
Lee
"

I asked Lee if the card was NEC USB 2.0 chip based. If so I wonder if the Orange Micro drivers for OS X would
work (without then I think you're limited to USB 1.1 speeds
in OS X versions to date)

(added 7/10/2003)"
I have a siig brand 5-Port USB 2.0 card in my MDD G4 running 10.2.6. I
run the latest drivers from their website. Most of the time, i have no
problems with deep sleep. Sometimes though, when i tell my computer to
go to sleep, the computer freezes completely forcing a hard reset. No
problems at all waking up from sleep just the occasional problem
getting into sleep. I have read this is fairly common with USB cards
though.Mosco
"

(added 7/10/2003)"
I have an Iogear five port USB card in a AGP PowerMac with a PowerLogix 1Ghz
DP upgrade, running with Orange Micro drivers (which had many compatibility
issues) in OS 10.2.6. The machine will go into deep sleep and wake up again
with no problem except when my PNY USB 2.0 5 in 1 card reader is attached.
Then if it goes to sleep it cannot wake up.
George S.

I asked if the card was USB 2.0 or 1.1)
USB 2 with an NEC chip just like the Orange Micro card.
"

The system goes to deep sleep and then wakes up properly, even after
overnight sleep. Idle hard drives will spin down even if I have the
"Put the hard disk to sleep when possible." NOT selected. I can live
with that. The only problem is that, apparently, even the DVD-R drive
goes to sleep. If you have a CD or DVD loaded, after about 30 minutes
or so, the disk becomes unresponsive. If you try to access or eject
it, a kernel panic ensues. The only solution is to restart (not
log-out/log-in).
Tony A"

The Superdrive sleep issue (with a disc in the drive typically for long idle periods) is a fairly common complaint. (One reader said putting the system to sleep and then waking it helped - but I have not tried that personally.) In 10.1.x setting drives in ES to never sleep was often a fix, but not so in Jaguar. Not everyone complains about it in reports in the db here but many have. Even the Cocktail utility (set for no drive sleep) hasn't helped everyone. Personally I avoid leaving discs in Superdrives when not needed and I let iDVD fully encode movies before pressing the burn button to
minimize the time a disc has to be in the drive before the burn process starts.

(added 7/9/2003)"
I bought a crappy Cendyne USB 2.0 PCI card for my Dual 1.25 and it
works great without any sleep issues since May 25th. This was the
cheapest card ($19.99) I could find at Micro Center (cheaper than USB
1.1 cards), and that's why I bought it. I did have to move devices
around a bit, but all is good now. What I have found is that sleep
issues are often due to the devices connected and not to the cards
themselves.
Regards, Hector M.
I dont have any 2.0 devices, so I have not tested this. I thought that
OSX had built in drivers for USB2.0 cards, but not sure. (I think at
least as of 10.2.6 you still need USB 2.0 drivers for
USB 2.0 speeds.-Mike)
"

The card alone may not support deep sleep, but for those with the problem a test w/o any connected drives/device is certainly worth checking. (Noted in the request for feedback above.)

Of note, a previously installed OWC 3-port Firewire PCI card (Agere?
chipset) did NOT support deep sleep, so obviously the "sleep problem" isn't
limited to Firewire 800 cards. (My comments on FW800 cards were just that - unlike many FW400 cards - None of the current Firewire 800 PCI cards to date have been reported to support deep sleep.-Mike)

Finally, I can NOT sleep the system when booted under OS 9.2.2, but that's
because, according to the Apple System Profiler, of an ATTO UL3S card also
installed. Thanks again for providing an invaluable resource!
Byron E.
"

(added 7/9/2003)"
Our studio has a 450Mhz AGP Graphics machine running OS X (10.2.6)
with 1.25 GB and a 30 GB hard drive.
Installed is an Orangelink+ USB 2.0 and Firewire (400) PCI card.
Deep sleep and wake from sleep seem to be working fine. The internal
drive spins down at sleep and spins up properly when awaken.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Hope this helps.
John
Story City
"

Works in both my G4/350 AGP machine and my Dual G4/533 Digital Audio without
drivers. Deep sleep is perfectly fine (as is waking). OS 10.2.6 (though I
started under something earlier). Have not tested USB 2.0 speeds, as I have
no USB 2.0 devices, but it was a cheap source of powered USB ports in any
case.
-charlie
"

(added 7/9/2003)"
I have an orange micro USB2 card (4 external sockets and 1 internal)
running in a DP533 with 10.2.6. I had a couple of problems initially,
but a reinstall of the driver (from their web site) after quitting all
apps solved that and since have had no problems. Expensive card tho
compared to PC ones : (
Great site- fantastically useful- keep up the good work!-Eric W.
"

(added 7/9/2003)"
Hiya Mike! I have a SIIG USB 2.0 card on my system, that comes up from deep sleep with
no problems. Got it as Best Buy for 40 bucks.

I'm currently only using the card as the bus for my El Gato EyeTV, but
hooking other peripherals to it doesn't seem to cause any sleep issues.
Good show, as always! -Andrew
"

(added 7/9/2003)"
I am using the Orange Micro OrangeLink+ USB 2.0/Firewire, 3.1.2 drivers card in a Quicksilver Mac running 10.2.6. Deep sleep works for both the USB and Firewire devices.
I am using the SIIG Smartmedia reader and and external Firewire drive connected to this interface.

Prior to the 3.1.2 driver, this card was unusable with Jaguar as the drivers would crash early in the boot process. The only solution was to delete the Orange Micro drivers and therefor there was no USB 2.0 support. The system has been stable for the last month (since the release of the new driver).
Harry K.
"

(added 7/9/2003)"
I have a Sawtooth (G4/AGP) 500 with an Orange Micro USB 2.0 card and deep sleep
works fine in OS X. I have had no problems in this area with 10.1.5
through 10.2.6. This has been the case with or without the Orange Micro
drivers installed. My machine will not sleep at all in OS 9 with this
card installed. Since I only use OS 9 to run Norton this is not an
issue.
Ronald P.
(he later wrote)
No problems with wake from sleep, with devices attached or not. In
fact, the Orange Micro card is the only reason my machine will sleep at
all in OS X. I have a Canon scanner and if it is connected to one of
the on board USB ports my Mac won't sleep. If I connect it to a port on
the card sleep works fine. I also have my Griffin PowerMate connected
to the card and it works fine, though it obviously doesn't work as a
power switch this way. I have also connected my printer to this card
and had no problems.
"

(reader FYI - there's no USB 2.0 (speed) support in OS 9, only with OS X.)

(added 7/9/2003)"
I have an Iogear 2-port USB 2.0 card (model #GIC220U) installed in my
Sawtooth (w/ GigaDesign 1Ghz)...no sleep issues whatsoever.
Chris
(I asked for missing info like OS verison, etc. and he wrote)
I'm running OS X.2.6 and didn't install any additional drivers (the card
only came with a Windoze disc). No problems regardless of whether a device
is plugged in or not. I don't currently have any USB 2.0 devices, so don't
know if that would make a difference.
"